Book excerpt: Making revealing and innovative use of public records from the early part of the twentieth century, Stewart Tolnay challenges the widely held idea that black southern migrants to northern cities carried with them a dysfunctional family culture. He demonstrates the powerful impact of economic conditions on family life and views patterns of marriage and childbearing, not only among early twentieth-century farm families but also among contemporary urban families, as rational responses to prevailing social, economic, and political conditions.