“Hillbilly Highway” Reading Series

The “Hillbilly Highway,” also known as the Appalachian migration, holds a significant place in American history. This monumental internal relocation of countless poor and working-class individuals, black and white, has unfortunately received limited attention from historians. However, delving into the depths of this long-overlooked story brings to light its profound impact on various aspects of American society, like the modern industrial labor movement and the postwar urban crisis, but it also becomes evident that the influence of the Appalachian migration extends to the rise and development of a large aspect of today's working-class.

The Hillbilly Highway was a parallel to the better-known Great Migration of African-Americans from the south. Many of these Appalachian migrants went to major industrial centers such as Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, Toledo, and Muncie, Indiana. Many of the Appalachians lived in concentrated enclaves, an example being Uptown, Chicago, which was nicknamed "Hillbilly Heaven" in the 1960s.

While most often used in this metaphoric sense, the term is sometimes used to refer to specific stretches of roadway, such as U.S. Route 23, or Interstate 75. The migration was not a finite process, as it continues today and migrants commonly move back to their home states in retirement. The Hillbilly Highway Reading Series is a rural-urban exchange of words, music, and ideas where writers and musicians from Appalachia to Detroit, and other urban centers associated with the “Hillbilly Highway,” engage to explore this mass-migratory event and the complex narratives it involves.