Thomas W. Jones On a burning deck: an oral history of the great migration, hardcover/tom jones

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In the earliest decades of the 20th century, more than twenty-eight million men and women--black and white--began The Great Migration north from Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia and other states of the Deep South and Appalachia.

This, as all were lured to the industrial centers of our country by high wages and the opportunity to make a better life for themselves and their families.

Among the white southerners who left their homes, tens of thousands left Kentucky and came to work in the rubber factories of Ohio during the teens and twenties, forever changing the state's culture, history, and politics.

Who were they? Other than the throwaway term of hillbillies, the astonishing fact is that historians really haven't had any idea at all.

In Susan Allyn Johnson's 2006 dissertation, Industrial Voyagers: A Case Study of Appalachian Migration to Akron, Ohio, 1900-1940, she writes: Virtually absent from historical narratives are the experiences of the 1.

3 million white southerners who left the South before the Great Depression.

Furthermore, she adds, they were less likely .

to write letters or keep the sort of personal journals that have served to document the experiences of sojourners of earlier eras.

In his 2011 work, The Devil's Milk, author John Tully notes, No rubber worker has left his or her memoirs, and those captains of industry who did write focused on invention and commerce, not the lives of the laborers.

With this seemingly gaping lack of information on these early laborers, it is hardly surprising that there is also no body of historical literature documenting the impact of any of these individuals as they moved into positions of responsibility in local government in Ohio.

In fact, for all their contributions to the industrial growth of Ohio in the 20th Century, the individual role of these people, these migrants, has been completely lost and forgotten--until now.

Based on over 50 hours of oral histories, as well as dozens of rare photos from arch.