This book examines the century-long migration of African Americans who moved within the South after the Civil War and then left to settle permanently in other regions, irrevocably altering the political, social, and cultural history of the United States; and considers these movements within the broader historical, political, and cultural context of the African Diaspora.

Daily Life during African American Migrations focuses attention to the everyday social, cultural, and political lives of migrants in the United States as they established communities far away from their former homes. This book examines blacks' labor and urban experiences, social and political activism, and cultural and communal identities, while also considering the specificity of African Americans' migration as part of their long struggle for freedom and equality.

The author merges information from black migration studies, which focus on the internal movement of African American people in the United States, with African Diaspora studies, which consider peoples of African descent who have settled far from their native homes—either voluntarily or through duress—to document how these immigrants and their children create new communities while maintaining cultural connections with Africa. The stories of the nine million African Americans who collectively left the South between 1865 and 1965—and the millions more who left the Caribbean and Africa—not only document this long history of migration, but also present compelling human drama.