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Goin' to Chicago. Prod. by George King. 1994. 70 mins. (California Newsreel, 149 9th St. 420, San Francisco, CA 94103)
In the last ten years, the topic of Black migration in the twentieth-century United States has drawn increasing attention from scholars, publishers, oral historians, journalists, and museum personnel. It has emerged as a major focus in treatments of African Americans' historical experience, gaining a central place of importance similar to that long enjoyed by civil rights movements and struggles for economic and political power. The video production Goin' to Chicago, produced by George King, gives further evidence of the growing interest in Black migration and of the new approaches to interpreting southern Blacks' movement to northern cities.
Goin 'to Chicago presents Black migration from the lower Mississippi region to the midwestern metropolis through videotaped interviews with African Americans whose lives the migration shaped. These interviewees describe their family backgrounds, southern schools, work experiences, and decisions to head north (or to remain in the South) as the video shows photographs and movie footage of rural and urban scenes. The video resorts only infrequently to third-person voice-over narration and simulated newsreel footage for contextual information about Black migration. Other. wise, only simple captions identifying interviewees, places, and dates embellish the stories told by the Black men and women in Goin' to Chicago.