South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration

South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration. By Marcia Châtelain. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015. Pp. xx, 240, notes, bibliography, index, illustrations. Paper, $23.95.)South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration by Marcia Châtelain focuses on African American girls who migrated from the South to Chicago from 19101940. Most settled on the South Side, although some lived in other areas of the city and in Harvey, Illinois, thirty miles north of Chicago. The author examines both the push and pull factors that prompted black girls to move to Chicago, as well as the changes in their social, economic, and cultural lives that occurred over three decades. Châtelain argues that[a]s African American parents and community leaders experienced major changes in their economic, social, and cultural lives during the Migration, their outreach to girls led them to define black girlhood in relationship to their anxieties about urbanization, as well as their greatest hopes for the era. In addition, Chicago's community leaders scrutinized black girls' behaviors, evaluated their choices, and assessed their possibilities as part of a larger conversation about what urbanization ultimately meant for black citizens (p. 2).Châtelains impressive assortment of both primary and secondary sources paint a vivid picture of black girls' lives in Chicago. She employs oral histories, black newspapers, and manuscript collections, such as the Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society, Urban League Annual Reports, and others. Books and articles on black history-many of them on Chicago, women's history, the Civil Rights Movement, children's history, African American religion, and other subjects- inform the work.Most black girls who migrated to Chicago came from the rural South, although some hailed from small towns or cities. The girls usually came with their families, but some migrated alone. African Americans left behind a South in which they were mired in poverty amid deteriorating economic conditions, where they experienced physical and sexual exploitation, where racism and Jim Crow segregation limited their accomplishments, and where constricted opportunities for formal education consigned them to second-class citizenship. Meanwhile, the urban North appeared more inviting, socially, economically, and politically. Robert Abbott's Chicago Defender urged blacks to move to the North to find a better life. These migrants anticipated that they would find better jobs with higher status and better pay, an escape from racism and Jim Crow, enhanced opportunities for education, and greater prospects for home ownership. Although some found a better life than in the South, Chicago was not the Promised Land that many had anticipated. …