Summary

“A Higher Call” describes the way in which fast-moving information and new technologies influenced black migration northward from the South. As the United States entered World War I, black men around the country volunteered to travel to Europe and fight for their country; the all-black Eighth infantry was just one such group. As a result, significant job opportunities appeared as men of all ethnicities left for Europe. Louis Swift, inheritor to his father Gustavus Swift’s meatpacking empire, hired many women, white and black, in order to fill these employment gaps, and he and other employers began to look to the South for more employees.

In “Northern Fever,” Hartfield says that poor wages, segregated education, continuing white supremacy, and even a natural disaster in the form of an insect pest infestation in the highly-profitable cotton crops led to...