The Great Migration
(~1800 – 1920 CE)

The conventional narrative centers British industrial and imperial dominance — the factory system, the railway, and the empire “on which the sun never set.”

The Great Migration is both a movement and agency of millions of Black Americans north and west, echoing the period’s own migration theme. Note: all other names for a period are about a people or era rather than a system.

Research completed to date for this period’s throughline — beginning slightly before the Great Migration proper as its origin point and carrying forward through it — includes:

• Malinda Russell’s 1866 “A Domestic Cook Book,” believed to be the first cookbook published by an African American author;

• Abby Fisher’s 1881 “What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking,” among the earliest African American-authored cookbooks;

• The 1936 opening of Thornton Prince’s BBQ Chicken Shack in North Nashville, originating Nashville hot chicken;

• Lena Richard’s 1939 Creole cookbook and TV cooking show, making her America’s first celebrity chef;

• Leah Chase’s 1940s tenure at Dooky Chase’s in New Orleans, a covert meeting place for Civil Rights leaders under segregation;

• Zelda Wynn Valdes opening her own NYC boutique in 1948, the first Black designer to do so, and later designing the original Playboy Bunny costume;

• Georgia Gilmore’s 1953 “Club From Nowhere,” a secret network of home cooks funding the Montgomery Bus Boycott;

• Ann Lowe designing Jacqueline Bouvier’s 1953 wedding gown with little public credit at the time;

• Sylvia Woods opening Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem in 1962;

• LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) popularizing the term “soul food” in a 1964 essay during the Black Pride movement.

Historical Cultures: Meiji Japan, British Raj, French Indochina

Contemporary Cultures: Every LA immigrant community.