Introduction : a street of dreams / Blyden Jackson -- Toward a socio-historical and demographic portrait of twentieth-century African-Americans / Dernoral Davis -- Rethinking the role of racial violence in the Great Migration / Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck -- The social and economic life of southern blacks during the migration / Carole Marks -- Black labor is the best labor : southern white reactions to the Great Migration / James R. Grossman -- The Great Migration as a lever for social change / William Cohen -- The migration and black protest in Jim Crow Mississippi / Neil R. McMillen.