Location: Maring Hunt Library, 2005 S. High St, Muncie

Time: 5:30-6:30 pm

Date: Feb 23, 2024

Max Fraser will speak about the importance of the mid-twentieth-century migration from the South to industrial cities such as Muncie.  Fraser’s new book, Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class, traces the movement of southern whites to the industrial Midwest. Fraser did part of his research for the book in Muncie and he will talk about how the experiences of Muncie fit into a larger story. The talk is sponsored by the Muncie Public Library, the Center for Middletown Studies, and the Ross Center.

Copies of Hillbilly Highway are available for purchase here.  The cost of the book is $32.00.

Fraser is an assistant professor of American History at the University of Miami. A former journalist, his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Nation, Dissent, and elsewhere.  He is the author of Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class (Princeton University Press, 2023). The book tells the largely untold story of the great migration of white southerners to the industrial Midwest and its profound and enduring political and social consequences.