Hillbilly Highway

The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class

Author: Max Fraser and Lyle Blaker

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Description

Over the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, as many as eight million whites left the economically depressed southern countryside and migrated to the booming factory towns and cities of the industrial Midwest in search of work. The "hillbilly highway" was one of the largest internal relocations of poor and working people in American history, yet it has largely escaped close study by historians. In Hillbilly Highway, Max Fraser recovers the long-overlooked story of this massive demographic event and reveals how it has profoundly influenced American history and culture--from the modern industrial labor movement and the postwar urban crisis to the rise of today's white working-class conservatives. The book draws on a diverse range of sources--from government reports, industry archives, and union records to novels, memoirs, oral histories, and country music--to narrate the distinctive class experience that unfolded across the Transappalachian migration during these critical decades. As the migration became a terrain of both social advancement and marginalization, it knit together white working-class communities across the Upper South and the Midwest--bringing into being a new cultural region that remains a contested battleground in American politics to the present.

About the Author

Max Fraser is assistant professor of history at the University of Miami. A former journalist, he has written for the Nation and other publications. As a full-time voice talent and Audie-nominated audiobook narrator, Lyle Blaker has narrated nearly 100 audiobook titles, as well as countless hours of e-learning narration for major companies such as Houghton Mifflin, Harvard Business School, and Refinery Pass, and is an often-used voice for WGBH Channel 2 in Boston, Massachusetts. He is known for his warm, friendly, and approachable narration style.