Drawing on 50 oral interviews with migrants and on various written records, this text examines the experiences of African American women who migrated west and built communities there. Perspectives are given on how social change takes place and how community is established and maintained.

This study examines the migrated and community-building efforts of African-American women who moved from the South to the East Bay during World War II. Drawing on fifty oral interviews with former migrants, it details who these women were, how they experienced the migration, and how they used their southern cultural traditions to keep their families together and establish new communities in the East Bay.