In the United States, the Hillbilly Highway is the out-migration of Appalachians from the
Appalachian Highlands region to industrial cities in northern, midwestern, and western states, primarily in the years following
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
in search of better-paying industrial jobs and higher standards of living. Many of these migrants were formerly employed in the
coal mining
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...
industry, which started to decline in 1940s. The word
hillbilly
Hillbilly is a term (often derogatory) for people who dwell in rural, mountainous areas in the United States, primarily in southern Appalachia and the Ozarks. The term was later used to refer to people from other rural and mountainous areas west ...
refers to a negative
stereotype
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for exampl ...
of people from Appalachia. The term hillbilly is considered to be a modern term because it showed up in the early 1900s. 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
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...
,
Chicago
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,