EBSEl blues del silenci
CAESEN

The blues
highway

1926–1963. The land, the water, the sound and the silence of a generation that headed north and west.

Choose a route at the crossroads. Then scroll to travel, or turn the radio dial.

The crossroads

The Great Migration never had just one road. Between 1910 and 1970, some six million Black Southerners left along three main routes, and each one gave rise to a different music. Choose your way.

30°N40°N45°N 90°W85°W80°W75°W CANADA MEXICO Gulf of Mexico Los Angeles Chicago Clarksdale Detroit Dallas Atlanta Greensboro Durham Greenville Jackson Houston Memphis Montgomery New York Opelousas Richmond St. Louis Washington New Orleans N 300 km The Great Migration 1910–1970

Road Rail

Map data: Natural Earth, U.S. Census Bureau

The Mississippi route

Electric blues, rock and roll and soul

New Orleans Mile zero
The river port of New Orleans, where Delta cotton ended its journey.
The river port of New Orleans, where Delta cotton ended its journey.Library of Congress, FSA/OWI collection

Where the highway begins

Highway 61 starts here and follows the Mississippi north. For decades, Delta cotton came down the river to this port. In time, people would make the journey the other way.

1927 Greenville Collection II, Water
Displaced people on the Greenville levee, spring 1927.
Displaced people on the Greenville levee, spring 1927.Library of Congress, American Red Cross collection

The river that broke the levee

Spring 1927. After months of rain, the Mississippi overtops the levees in dozens of places and floods much of the Delta.

What the newspapers said

A model rescue. The Red Cross sets up camps for the displaced, and Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover leads the operation. He comes out of it so strengthened that the following year he wins the presidency.

1941 Clarksdale Collection IV, Sound
Saturday afternoon in a Clarksdale juke joint, November 1939.
Saturday afternoon in a Clarksdale juke joint, November 1939.Marion Post Wolcott, FSA/OWI, Library of Congress

The first time he heard himself

In August 1941, Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress and John Work III of Fisk University arrive at Stovall plantation looking for Robert Johnson, who had died three years earlier. Instead they find a tractor driver who plays guitar: McKinley Morganfield.

When they play the recording back to him, he hears his own voice for the first time. Years later, as Muddy Waters, he would say that was the day he realized he could be a real musician.

In the Delta they listened to KFFA 1360 from Helena, Arkansas: King Biscuit Time, on the air since November 1941.

End of the line

This archive grows over time. Items being catalogued will open one by one, and some stories that are silence today will find their voice.

Back to the crossroads

The Atlantic route

Piedmont blues and jazz

1928 Atlanta Collection IV, Sound
An Atlanta street, 1930s.
An Atlanta street, 1930s.Library of Congress, FSA/OWI collection

Twelve strings in Atlanta

In October 1928, the Victor label sets up a temporary studio in Atlanta and records Blind Willie McTell. Blind from birth, he plays a twelve-string guitar with a fine, fast technique, somewhere between blues and ragtime.

This is the Piedmont sound, from the belt running from Georgia to Virginia: brighter than the Delta's, made for dancing and for earning a living on street corners.

What made it onto record

Statesboro Blues becomes a classic. More than forty years later, the Allman Brothers' version takes it to a mass rock audience.

1935 Durham Collection IV, Sound
Tobacco auction in Durham, North Carolina.
Tobacco auction in Durham, North Carolina.Library of Congress, FSA/OWI

The tobacco warehouses

In Durham, North Carolina, tobacco auction days fill the town with farmers with money in their pockets. Outside the warehouses, Blind Boy Fuller plays.

In 1935, J. B. Long, a store manager, takes him to New York to record. Fuller becomes one of the best-selling blues musicians of the decade, recording with harmonica player Sonny Terry. He dies in 1941, still young. Terry ends up taking the same road as so many others: north, to New York.

  • Blind Boy Fuller and J. B. Long Being catalogued
  • Sonny Terry in New York Restricted access
From the Carolinas to New York, most people made the journey by train, up the coast.
1939 New York Collection V, Silence
Harlem, late 1930s.
Harlem, late 1930s.Library of Congress

A song they wouldn't record

Harlem is the cultural capital of Black America. In December 1938, Café Society opens in Greenwich Village, one of the first clubs in the city where Black and white patrons sit at the same tables. There, Billie Holiday begins singing Strange Fruit, a song about lynching in the South.

What outsiders saw

Harlem's big clubs, like the Cotton Club, fill the nights with the best orchestras in the country: Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway.

  • Café Society → Recovered
  • Strange Fruit Being catalogued
  • The Apollo's amateur nights Restricted access

End of the line

This archive grows over time. Items being catalogued will open one by one, and some stories that are silence today will find their voice.

Back to the crossroads

The Western route

Texas blues, rhythm and blues and West Coast blues

1953 Houston Collection IV, Sound
Houston, 1940s.
Houston, 1940s.Library of Congress, FSA/OWI

A Black-owned label in Texas

In Houston's Fifth Ward, businessman Don Robey founds Peacock Records in 1949, one of the first successful Black-owned record labels. Gatemouth Brown records there and, in 1953, so does Big Mama Thornton.

What sold millions

In 1956, Elvis Presley's Hound Dog becomes one of the best-selling records of the decade.

1926 Dallas Collection IV, Sound
Deep Ellum, Dallas.
Deep Ellum, Dallas.Source to be confirmed

The blind singer of Deep Ellum

Deep Ellum is where Black Dallas goes to have a good time. Blind Lemon Jefferson sings on its streets, and a boy from the neighborhood walks with him as his guide: Aaron Thibeaux Walker, who will one day be T-Bone Walker.

In 1926, Jefferson travels to Chicago to record for Paramount and becomes the best-selling country blues artist of the 1920s. He dies in Chicago in December 1929, in circumstances that remain unclear to this day.

During the war, trains to California were packed with families from Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.
1942 Los Angeles Collection III, The Road
Women workers at a California aircraft plant, 1942.
Women workers at a California aircraft plant, 1942.Library of Congress, FSA/OWI

The electric guitar goes west

The Second World War opens shipyards and aircraft plants in California, and hundreds of thousands of Black Americans head there for work. Central Avenue in Los Angeles fills with clubs.

In 1942, T-Bone Walker records Mean Old World for Capitol on electric guitar. It is a clean, sophisticated sound that will shape B.B. King and every blues guitarist who comes after.

The promise

California means work, factory wages and a life far from Jim Crow.

End of the line

This archive grows over time. Items being catalogued will open one by one, and some stories that are silence today will find their voice.

Back to the crossroads
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