How the 'Hillbilly Highway' transformed labor politics and remade the white working class

Published October 13, 2023 at 7:40 AM CDT

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View from an overpass near North Avenue looking north in Chicago, Ill., Dec. 1949. Volume of traffic is carried by eight lanes of pavement. (AP)

Here & Now‘s Jane Clayson speaks with Max Fraser about his new book, “Hillbilly Highway.” It traces the largely untold story of the 20th-century migration of white Southerners to the industrial Midwest.

Book excerpt: ‘Hillbilly Highway’

By Max Fraser

Excerpted from HILLBILLY HIGHWAY: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class by Max Fraser. Copyright © 2023 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.