Jack S. Blocker. A Little More Freedom: African Americans Enter
the Urban Midwest, 1860-1930. Urban Life and Urban Landscape
Series. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2008. 368 pp.
$49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8142-1067-3. Reviewed by Jeanette
Keith (Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania) Published on
H-SHGAPE (March, 2009) Commissioned by James Ivy In this
copiously researched book, Jack S. Blocker uses quantitative
history and elements of immigration and regional history to
illuminate the roots of the Great Migration of African Americans
out of southern states into the urban Lower Midwest, defined as
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. In doing so, he advances two
arguments. He contends that racist violence, while significant,
played a smaller role than economics and structural factors in
African Americans’ decisions to migrate and in their choices of
destination. He also argues that prior to World War I African
Americans did not migrate from the South directly to major
metropolitan areas, but instead to "nonme