BLACK FOLK: THE ROOTS OF THE BLACK WORKING CLASS
BLAIR LM KELLEY
© 2023 Liveright
$30.00
338 pages

In the years immediately following emancipation, former slaves were shut out of nearly every job other than domestic and sharecropping, and they "still faced circumstances almost as degrading as those of slavery." Wanting better lives, Black workers first headed from farm to big city, in the hopes of landing good jobs.

"My work as a historian has always begun with the stories of my ancestors," says author Blair LM Kelley. In using her own family tree as a launching point, author Kelley lends detail to tales she's heard all her life and knows well.

This is no small thing: it assures readers that there's authenticity inside every anecdote, that they're not told using guesswork but with real first-hand knowledge. Alongside that, Kelley uses her experience as a historian to show how her ancestors represent most of the Black working class between roughly 1865 and 1940, and how their journeys were like so many others in the Great Migration.

As for this, readers will be happy that both men and women stand tall here.

She opens this book with an angry man, his son, and the story of Henry, who was "born in bondage" and ultimately became a blacksmith. Kelley admits that she doesn't know much about Henry's earliest life, but in adulthood, he became a voter and "he was part of a community" — something that Kelley "found time and again" had given "Black folks [a] sense of self."

Like many Black women in the 1920s, Sarah Hill was a washerwoman hired to launder white people's clothes. It was an honorable job, one of the few available to Black women, but while it didn't pay well, it was enough for Sarah to put a little money aside. It allowed her some control over her own life then.

Callie House helped washerwomen organize. Cottrell Dellums belonged to an organization of Black porters. As a young teenager, Minnie Savage was "near the front of a grand exodus north" when she snuck away from her parents' home — to her great irritation, she could only find domestic work in Philadelphia. And after moving north, Hartford Boykin landed a job, but his past kept returning to him. "From his mother, Hartford learned that Black freedom was precarious," writes Kelley

Remember how totally dry your high school history books were? Yeah, this is nothing like those. Black Folk helps readers get to know people who lived a century ago or more. It's like being carefully handed a living, breathing story to hold.

This is one of those books that's meant to savor, to explore, and to enjoy. For historians and anyone who had a Great Migration ancestor, reading Black Folk is a good move.