A Century of Negro Migration

Carter Godwin Woodson wrote this book in 1918 as the Great Migration was just beginning - a Black historian documenting in real-time one of the most significant movements in American history. Woodson traces African American migration not from the Great Migration alone, but from the earliest days of freedom: the Underground Railroad, the promise of the North, the failed promises of Reconstruction. He shows that migration was never just about economics - it was about the fundamental human desire for freedom, dignity, and self-determination. Woodson wrote with urgency, understanding he was capturing only the beginning of something massive. The migration, he notes, has 'just begun' - Black Americans have 'recently realized that they have freedom of body and they will now proceed to exercise that right.' This is history happening as it is being written.