Up South

Perhaps the greatest migration in America's history is the movement of African Americans from the southern states to the urban Northeast and Midwest during the first half of this century. Motivated by racial violence and a failing economy in the South, this legendary exodus has informed the work of some of the greatest black writers, including Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, Mary McLeod Bethune, and W.E.B. DuBois. Never before, however, has the totality of this pivotal black experience been captured in a single volume. Up South gathers a vast range of documents and photographs - from letters and turn-of-the-century items in the Chicago Defender, Crisis, and Opportunity, to scholarly research and selections from some of the finest American literary writing, including work by Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, and Ralph Ellison, as well as Wright, DuBois, and Bontemps. Malaika Adero has selected and introduced these works in a way that highlights the scope and drama of the watershed "exodus up south" A unique resource for students and teachers of urban and American studies, this volume is also a moving and eye-opening anthology of African American literature, scholarship, and journalism from the first half of this century.