Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class

In the second chapter of his book, Max Fraser shares how hillbilly highway, formally known as the U.S. Route 45, U.S. 31, U.S. 41 and U.S. 45, created opportunities for a “new type of mobility and a new form of migration” (Fraser, 50 and 51). Fraser argues against the typical migration studies philosophy of only noting the starting and ending points of migration, and he believes the migration experience is just as critical as the starting and ending locations (Fraser, 48). To demonstrate the experience of migration, Fraser relies on testimonies both from migrants themselves and from newspaper clippings to tell what the trip from the South to Midwestern cities was like (Fraser, 46).

Fraser reiterates that transportation difficulties were a characteristic of the upper South and defined many Southerners' lives (Fraser, 49). However, through the mid-1920s, New Deal programs and poor economic conditions forced Southerners out of the South (Fraser, 51). Migrants often used the innumerable “taxi” services to leave the country sides on track for the midwest or “buses” which were station wagons (Fraser, 54 and 55). While most migrants were men, the most common women on the road were young women who were going to work, unpaid, as housewives (Fraser, 61).  Not only did the hillbilly highway bring people it also brought goods from the South to the North and vice versa (Fraser, 62). Fraser is sure to highlight the peculiarities of this migration. For instance, many of the white Southerners who went to the Midwest were only there sporadically or when work was short in the South, and they often travelled back home (Fraser, 71). He shares that this pattern is not true for Black southerners, as they were often fleeing the racial violence in the Jim Crow South and had a lower desire to return (Fraser, 73).  As a result of the cyclical migration Fraser describes, families found themselves constantly between old and new homes.

Max Fraser, "On the Road: Migration and the Making of a Transregional Working Class" in Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023).