Crude Freedom: Fossil Fuels, the Great Migration, and American Democracy

Mark Fiege

Colorado State University

Fort Collins, Colorado

 “Crude Freedom: Fossil Fuels, the Great Migration, and American Democracy”

This paper will examine the relationship between energy transitions and the African American freedom struggle, in particular the Great Migration in which, from the 1890s to the 1970s, some six million black people left the U.S. South for northern, midwestern, and western regions of the nation. The paper will argue that the Great Migration was, in part, a function of the transition from organic energy sources to coal and then petroleum, a major energy transition that radically transformed agriculture, industrial production, and transportation, and thereby offered black people the means by which to leave the South relatively quickly, cheaply, and silently. The paper will draw from, and reflect upon, the political economist Timothy Mitchell’s concept of “carbon democracy.” Whereas Mitchell argues that the fluid “political properties” of petroleum made it less conducive than coal—a solid—to the fostering of democracy, I will demonstrate that in the context of the U.S. black freedom struggle, petroleum abundance enabled black mobility and thus aided the civil rights movement and the democratization of American politics. This case study, furthermore, will place the Great Migration in the context of other modern migrations around the planet and will help us to understand the extent to which the exploitation of fossil fuels made them possible. By linking environmental history to the history of race and civil rights, I hope to provide opportunities for the session commentator and the chair, the other presenters, and the audience to consider the potentially fruitful connections between environmental history and the methodologies characteristic of social history and other fields.