Transcripts For CSPAN3 100 Years Of African American Migrations 20240713

Good evening, everyone. All right. I think our technical difficulties are finished and id like to welcome you all to the opening women. I do want to report welcome you all to the 104th meeting of the association. My name is lionel campbell. It is my honor to bring together on a, well it is my honor to convene hillary this plenary a. When i think when we were planning the conference, we always liked to bring our heavy hitters out, and i think today is one of those occasions in which we have a collection of fine scholars and activists here to address our theme, so what we decided to do is to run the plenary more as a roundtable, as a moderate did conversation about issues with the great migration, and i want to introduce our panelists and give them an opportunity to speak for a few minutes as far as their own work, and their perceptions and ideas about the great migration and then move on into our question and answer, followed by a discussion, followed by a question and answer session with the audience. So i want to introduce our panelists. Our first panelist is joe trotter, who is a professor of history and social justice and pass History Department here iconic the Melon University in pittsburgh. He is off the director and founder of the counting the melon center for African American urban studies and economies. He is currently working on a study of African American urban life since the atlantic slave trade. He has served on the boards and committees and numerous professional organizations such as the association of american historians, and past president of the labor class history association, an organization that is near and dear to me, one of my dissertation advisers was one of the founders of it. All right, our next panelist is paragraph, and she is the inaugural chair of the African Diaspora studies department and according to a professor of English Literature and African American studies at columbia university. They want to see you, all right. Griffin is the author of a book on the African American immigration narrative, well and author for the honey brown of hartford, connecticut, it is 64 to eight 68, her Current Research is called harlem narrative, women, artists and progressive politics during world war ii. We next have crystal our sanders. She is an associate professor and director of history at a university. Shes the author of numerous articles and as it appeared in numerous outlets such as our own journal of African American history. Her first book, a chance for change, has received several awards and was a finalist for the Benjamin Hooks National Book award. We also have a dear friend of mine, maurice hobson, who is an associate professor of African American studies and history at Georgia State university. His Research Interest are ground in the field of African American history, 20th century history, comparative labour, African American study, or a history, political clout to, me and the like. He is the author of the Award Winning book, the legends of the black mecca, politics and class and the making of modern atlanta, which published by the university of North Carolina press. Next, we have my dear, friend my chicago sister, and myiti sengstackerice. She is the president of a Chicago Charity which produces the festival that happens right outside my front door. Shes also the founder and publisher of a lifestyle publication inspired by the historic, news, politics, and rich culture of chicagoland. Myiti brings a special area of expertise because she comes from a very Famous Family that includes the photographer bobby sengstacke, go without and others, so without any further, ado i would like to give the panelists some opening remarks about ten minutes or so, and then we can move into our conversation really. Good evening. We reveal to you hear me okay . Okay, i want to say thank you to lionel for that introduction. This is an exciting moment for me, especially since i am the senior must aarian up here, im reeling a great looking a great shot in the arm from my young colleagues in the work they are doing, so in some ways but i sort of thought about what i would say in my opening remarks, i got so excited about thinking about where the field is going to go in the future and where it has been in the past, that i neglected to do some of the more personal discussions about how i personally got into this field, but hopefully the question and answer period will give us a chance, so please, bear with me as i say a few words about this field. Indeed it is a privilege to join this panel on the African American migration experience. We are not only celebrating a century of African American migration history in north america, we are celebrating a century of research on this subject, during the early 20th century, carnage you, wilson, w. We do boys and others, but established the intellectual foundation for black migration studies as a scholarly field. They carefully documented black migration through rural, small towns in urban america at significant historical phenomena. They also challenge the prevailing racist portrait of black migrants as quote, shift plus, lazy and unstable in work and in residence on. While on the contrary, these founding fathers, so to speak, for black migration studies declared, and i quote, these migrants are not lazy. They are not shift less. They are not unstable. In no uncertain terms, the founders of black migration studies and listed their scholarship in the fight against white supremacy, both national and transnational. In the years following world war ii, however, if of urban communities studies opened a new chapter in black Migration Research. Historian gilbert us asking and others documented the role of black migration in the rise of racially segregated communities across the urban northeast and midwest. In their view, the great migration nationalized americas race problem. It underscores the need for nationwide, not just the, regional southern or regional civil rights and social justice movement, report it required a nationwide battle to dismantle jim crow, north and south. Nonetheless, by the early 1980s, little despite nearly 75 years of creative scholarship, our understanding of African American migration remains incomplete. Numerous blind spots, gaps and misconceptions undermined our comprehension of the black migration and historical perspective. Few studies consider the impact of black Population Movements and working class formations. Women, gender, intellectual and cultural issues. And the less, of a large body of historical scholarship transform the pictures for black migration during the closing decades of the 20th century and the opening years of the new millennium, the new scholarship was not limited to historians. I perform theologist, anthropologist, economists, journalist, and literary and cultural scholars all made distinct contributions to this literature. The scholarship made fundamental conceptual as well as empirical contributions to knowledge. It accented the complicated introspection of race, class, sexuality, gender and power relations in the development of African American migration history. Previous generations focused almost exclusively on the heyday of the great migration during the early to mid 20th century, but recent studies at our disposal today not only explore the unfolding great migration years but also reach back deep into the 19, 18th and 17th centuries in black migration history. But that is not all. Current studies cover a broad range of regions, themes and topple areas. Recent topics include most notably, the cultural state, the environment, black childhood and youth, male and female and deepening layers of African American political, cultural, intellectual and community life. At the same, time the scholarship engages a series of burning debates about the origins, causes and consequences of black migration, not only for black people, but also for the nation, its culture and its democratic institutions. In short, we have a century of innovative black Migration Research at our disposal. Indeed, given the richness and diversity of the scholarship, some Young Scholars just might feel that the odyssey is no longer, there so to speak, in Migration Research, but on the contrary, i believe that the recent outpouring of scholarship brings us to a great crossroads in African American migration studies. The time seems ripe to set an agenda for the next generation of research would be. But as we set this agenda, from a grim as young people imagine, identify, and bringing fresh new project on the subject, as they go about this next wave of scholarship, it is my hope as a senior scholar that we will take full advantage of the current moment to craft a variety of new sympathies or general studies of black migration and historical perspectives, in any case, i am looking forward to a lively discussion about Agenda Setting for the next generation of African American migration studies. Thank you. Good afternoon. Rightly the great migration continues to be of interest to scholars, students, and also to general readers, and i have to admit that i am always surprised when press in general readers respond to newark but the great migration. This phenomenon gets discovered or rediscovered every ten or 20 years. But on npr radio programs and book reviews, popular works, most often popular work, sometimes scholarly works, are greeted with the great sense of wonder and astonishment. Why didnt i know about this, post usually say. It is as if we live in a parallel universe. Writers and scholars continue to find the topic to be a rich one of central importance to understanding in black history and american city, but non academic readers and critics seem entirely unfamiliar with the great migration, even though it is so shaped contemporary american politics and culture, so shape the world in which they live. The same expressions of surprise greeted nicholas lam as the Promised Land in 1991, in turn, four risible work in setting, the warmth of other sons in 2010, and this past spring, in the gifted soprano singer alicia hall moron and her husband, the pianist composer just imran, presented when the music of black america at county, hall at the kennedy center, at the chicago symphony or fauna orchestra, and even in hamburg, germany, they asked by the same kind of reaction. Headline in the atlantic red, how art can double as historical corrective. But the miranda for the first to say, that theyre incredible production digital benefited greatly from the rich body of work from scholars and creative writers. Black artists have been writing migration narratives, singing migration songs, field planning migration series since 1902. They continue to do so as riders like ayanna mattis had done just this decade. So after all these years, i am still surprised by their surprise, but having said all of, this i do think that the stories of migration that have made black america and indeed have made america continue to provide rich materials for scholars, they continue to inspire extraordinary works of art, some of which i hope we get a chance to talk about, which revealed new dimensions of a story that some of us, many of us in this room, but certainly not all of us thought we already knew. Thank you. You have to. Good afternoon. Thank you all with all of that for being with us. Im i think lionel for invited me to be a part of this plenary and for having the opportunity to share works for my forthcoming book project. I want to begin with a story. In 1949, paula jones, a 20yearold African American man i applied for admission to the university of alabama law school. The dean of admission rejected his application because the only publicly supported law school in alabama was for white students only. Will you in an attempt to ameliorate the situation, the dean encourage jones to seek a Legal Training outside of alabama with Financial Assistance from the state. In other words, the state of alabama offered to pay jones to study law anywhere else but in alabama, as a way to preserve segregation. Jones, however, he gave up his dream of studying law because he had no desire to leave the only home and community he had ever known. Thousands of other black southerners, however, data use state funds to leave home in search of the education that their home states denied them locally, on account of their race. And these students migration stories are hidden in the shadows of the scholarship on the great migration that involves over 6 million African Americans in the first three quarters of the 20th century. Both migration and, the great one and a lesser known educational one, stem from African Americans desire for a better life and their inability to build one in the land of their birth. Both the aspirants altered black life in American Cities north and south of our. Many scholars of black education have written about African Americans quest for elementary, secondary and baccalaureate education. Like evidence to shift here graduate and professional training have been largely overlooked. As late as 1940, only nine black institutions in the south offered a masters degree, and no black institution converted a daughter of philosophy degree. Rather than provide African Americans with sustained instate opportunities for graduate study at Public Institutions that were provided to white citizens, orders Southern Border State lawmakers appropriated tax dollars to send black students out of the state for graduate training. The missouri began these segregation scholarships in 1921. By 1948, 16 other states had followed suit. Usually, these jim crow scholarships covered the differential between the cost of pursuing a cost a course of study at the statewide institution and the cost of pursuing that same program of study out of state them. Some states also paid travel expenses. Most of these states continued their segregation Scholarship Programs until the 19 fifties a 1960s, defying the 1938 report Supreme Court decision in a court in agains view canada which the court decreed that states had a responsibility to offer a white and black citizens in state education. All too often, when i tell people about this project, they say, well, it was not that, bad since the Scholarship Recipients studied at some of the best institutions in the country, including harvard, the university of wisconsin, university of chicago, and columbia university. Such a view, i argue, overlooks the emotional and psychological cost of being forced to leave the only land one new to obtain an education. Traveling to are from the gym crow said it was often an experience in public humiliation for black passengers, as bus drivers, train conductors and white passengers degraded African Americans. Along some routes, bathroom facilities did not exist for black travelers who were then forced to relieve themselves on the side of the road. Moreover, northern institutions did not roll out the proverbial welcome mat for black southerners. I so many in this room have pointed, out historical narratives of the great migration have tended to obscure the entrenched realities of northern racism. Those who received out of state Tuition Assistance routinely faced Racial Discrimination and social ostracism while studying abroad. I could give you countless examples of the experiences of many of the Scholarship Recipients. I columbia university, black students were not allowed to patronize any of the campus barbershops. At the university of kansas, black students were barred from participating in intercollegiate athletics. The rnc seeing, the debate team, the campus choir at the Student Council in. What many of these students at the university of canvas challenge the president , he essentially said, were letting you in, youre not even kansas citizen so you should be happy that youre here. Those who made the best of a bad situation and relocated out of state had to learn the rules of traveling while black to avoid humiliation. Hubert eaten, a black man from Winston Salem North Carolina attended medical school at the university of michigan with a segregation scholarship. Doctor eaten, i want to show you put your him on the screen, but technical difficulties are preventing me from doing, that but i can tell you the doctor eaten recalls making 25 roundtrip trips between Winston Salem and an arbor while he was in medical school, and he often talked about having to move to the back of the bus when the bus entered the state of virginia. One of the other things many of the Scholarship Recipients talked about was the Financial Hardship they endured. During resident charles wray attended the university of Southern California, for a ph. D. In english language and literature. After completing his course work, ray relocated back to North Carolina and only travel to california when necessary. He travel to california for a few days in may of 1952 to defend his dissertation before returning home. Once back in North Carolina, he learned at the university of Southern California requires candidates with a ph. D. Degree to appear in person to receive their diploma. This meant that ray needed to travel to california again, youre on the stipulations of North Carolinas segregation Scholarship Program only provided recipients with one round trip fare per academic here. North carolina denied raise request for assistance to attend his mandatory commencement. Somehow he, came up with the necessary funds and he became the first African American to receive a doctorate in english from usc. He later joined the faculty at North Carolina college for an eagles where he remained for the next quarter of a century. There are many rich educational migration stories like this one. If i had the time i would tell you more about freddy gray. The state of alabama paid for freddy gray to go to Case Western Law School in 1991. He received his law degree in 1994. He becomes a household name one year later as he represented rosa parks in court after she gives up her seat on a Montgomery City bus. For the sake of time, i want to close by impressing upon all of you why these stories are important, right . Why we cant afford to forget them. For one thing, lawmakers decisions descend black graduate student out of state rather than desegregate their black institutions or create graduate opportunities at public black Colleges Limited the curricular offerings of black institutions and hindered those schools abilities to achieve regional and national accreditation. Library consultant that we need for a libraries, laboratories, the markings of graduate education, were denied black colleges for decades. Story these educational migrations stories show the beginning of a long trajectory of the use of public dollars to support segregation. Segregation in education, i should say. Sharing his history of segregation scholarships complicates the idea that massive resistance to School Desegregation first erupted in the wake of the 1954 brown decision. We all know that after brown, Prince Edward county, virginia closes it school. They are officials in that county to use public dollars to Fund Scholarships for white students at segregationist academies and normally educational scholars pointed this as the beginning of massive resistance to the use of public funds for private education, but we need to look literally decades earlier in the 1920s when virginia and other states used dollars to preserve segregation. Now, in this earlier instance, African American officials carries, the aim is the, same to preserve segregation in public education, and i will close by saying we really should think about these educational migration stories to preserve segregation is another form of racism just as pernicious, and evil as racial violence, like lynching a disenfranchisement, segregation scholarship maintains white supremacy. You can easily point segregationist governor standing at full House Stories or the enforcement officials turning hoses on black children, and we can label these actions as racist without difficulty. We must, however, not forget the polite forms of racism that were maintained by bureaucracy and designed to preserve the status quo of white superiority and black inferiority. I will stop there because of time. Thank you. applause . Good afternoon. Its a pleasure to be here this afternoon. And thank you to Lionel Kimble for this invitation. Currently, there are several debates that are centered on the historiography of how we understand black freedom struggles. As a part of this distinguish panel, id like to offer you the underpinnings of a new direction in African American historical and social scientific studies that i have coined called the black new south. The black new south is a school of thought that focuses on the experiences of black people in the post 1965 south, challenging trends often overlooked by scholars. It attempts to provide a holistic perspective on the national and International Implications of the regions history, culture, education, politics, self disparities, religion and business. Now a major component of the black new south deals with how civil rights legislation, galvanized by white terror in birmingham and selma respectively, politically change the American South. And also encounters black reverse migration and the globalization of black cities, such as atlanta, at the immigration to the cities from the continent of africa and the rest of the black world which speaks to the larger conversation around the global south. What im arguing here said the civil rights legislation coming out of alabama, particularly the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which buttresses the 14th amendment and grants equal protection and due process under the law, citizenship, and the Voting Rights act of 1965 that comes out of selma, alabama which buttresses the 15th amendment against voting politically changes the American South. And this allows for us to understand 1965 as a watershed moment, in how we understand, how we can measure black progress in terms of black political empowerment in electoral politics. As such, the American South, after 1965 would emerge as a stronghold, where my first migration took rise. According to the u. S. Census, in alabamas black population yielded 27 , florida, 17 , georgia, 31. 5 , louisiana, 32. 5 . Mississippi, 37. 5 . North carolina, 22 . South carolina, 28 . Tennessee, 17 . And texas, 0. 5 , along with virginia. Virginias black population of 20 . Reporter in 1968, it was reported that there was 1469 black elected officials in the United States. As of 2011, it was reported that there are roughly 10, 500, dollars an increase of 700 of. As a result of the black new south, growth over this period was especially impressive at the state level. In five southern states, georgia, louisiana, mississippi, South Carolina and texas, a total increase of black elected officials between 1970 and 2015 was over ten fold. At the dawn of the 24 century, mississippi and alabama, places known for racism and injustices, had more black elected officials, at 1628, then the entire nation had in the 1970s, were as 1970s, ten states what the highest number of black elected officials collectively had been 821, proving the impact of black political empowerment in electoral politics. I say this to say that as evidence of the black new south, of the ten states with the largest number of elected officials at the dawning of the 21st century where mississippi, in this order, mississippi, alabama, louisiana, illinois which is not southern but well talk about that a little bit later, georgia, South Carolina, arkansas, North Carolina, texas, and michigan. All but two of these are the result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights act of 1965. Michigan illinois are known as up south. So, the result of this, i want us to kind of have a serious kind of conversation around this reverse migration. I want to give you all for much of my research is mean centered on the city of atlanta, the National International implications of the city and what it means to black people. Most of atlanta, 1973, a young upstart lawyer decides to run for mayor of the city of atlanta. And he does so without necessarily kissing the rings of black elite. This creates someone of a problem. One of the things that jackson understood if he understand the American South changing demographics. Theres a consummate we had nationwide trend in effect in the whole south. The reverse migration of blacks from the urban north, midwest and west was leading inexorably to a black new south. Black migration for the south of the north started after the civil war, and heightened during world war one as floods devastated southern farming and northern industrialization it attracted black war lords. In these, the greatest migration of blacks from the south to the north occurred in the 1960s parliament. However, by the 1970s, atlanta and other cities where regarded as a land of opportunity for blacks were entrepreneurship and, political ambition flourished. According to the 1971 u. S. Census, 108 blacks into left other parts of the country settled in the American South. In 1971, it was up from 97, 000, it was up to 97,000 the previous year. Yourself studies that show the between the years of 1970 1973, you have 247 blacks that move to the south where you had 156,000 black voters that moved out of the south at the same time. Historically, black populations were concentrated in the American South, actor the excess of millions of black women who was, known as the great migration, now when the return of black folks still remain in the American South they migrated their remaining killing can. By and, large most platter turning to the south as the result of the black new south were professionals moving to larger urban areas in the south such a atlanta, nashville, memphis and birmingham. For the most part, returning black did not receive the south as the ideally Promised Land, or a lad free of racial strife, private other socials. However, there were two major factors that made the south attractive. , first there was a growing disenchantment north with the north social ills, and secondly, blacks noticed that changes were taking place in the southern social climate, as civil rights legislation had knockdown rigid racial policy, that marks the racial subordination up the hill. South by 90 70, four there were nearly 2000 black elected officials across the south including the number of black, mayors shifting the hello everyone. And i thank, you dr. Campbell, for putting this together, so my name is myiti sengstackerice. I am very honored to be here, first of all, nadal and compelled to continue the work of really Robert Sengstacke abbott, that is really what has charge me to do the work that i have been doing, the studies that ive been doing, but he was considered the pied piper of the great migration. Before he had gone to an expedition in 1893 really and was really inspired by either be wells and Frederick Douglas and through that, decided that he was going to come back to chicago after he finished his studies at hampton. At the time it was called the happen institute, and hbcu, and my alma mater as well. And so, when he went down there, and by the, way he was at the exhibition raising money for hampton as part of a quartet, so back then, that is how they used to raise money for the hbcus, and so he came back to chicago in 1905, with pennies. We did actually become a lawyer. He had a large occasion later in chicago. And then, but he was told, oh, he is too black to be able to be able to be a lawyer, so he kept saying, i want to be a defender of my people. So his landlady gave him an opportunity to start his newspaper, the chicago defender, in 1905. Notorious so unified, he started to go door to door giving, news and it is interesting, because on the newspaper, when you see the first, newspaper in one size it says, good, news on the other side said, bad news. And so he would report on what was going on in the neighborhood. This was in 1905. So this really set the pace, and he was in the right place at the right time. As time went, on by 1910, five years from then, he was able to hire his first employee. So we did everything for five years. Around 19 seventies, it became apparent that there needed to be something well done about all the ills in the south. Actually, before that, but by 1970 he basically decided that he was going to have what they called the Great Northern drive, and so they were good to have these headlines that said, there is more jobs and there are meant to fill, them come up north and prosper. And so what we do, because they had no way of communicating away we did today, he work something out with the plumbing porters who have the smoky papers on the train im draw them off in various locations throughout the south, and as they dropped off in various laetitia throughout the south somebody would pick them up on the side of a mountain, distribute them throughout the south, and back then some hundred read from what we call cover to cover, even the ads, and in, there there were things like, you see people actually getting dressed, up being part of a social clubs, and so people were getting inspired. But they decided, you know what . We want to come up north. So that was what you would call the push impose of the south. The great migration, i should say. So what push them out of, course we know, it is jim crow. And what pulled them where the things that were happening in the north, what they called, or what itll be the Promised Land. Of, course it was not easy by the time they got up there, but i will say this. It give them opportunities. So when you came up their, instead of being richard right in the butler, law your richard right to novelist. You could be from the folklore us instead of the made. It changed their whole life. So then what we have in brownsville, ill talk about that particularly, because of my affinity for brownsville, that is our neighborhood, but brownsville was the area that everyone was kind of confined to when they came to chicago, and so we had a certain perimeter we could not go past. I know many of you scholars are familiar with the 1919 riots and all that happened there, part of that had to do with that confinement of us not being able to go out of certain boundaries, so now what was brownsville was also considered the black metropolis, or black hollywood, and so, people came together and there were thriving businesses. They had no choice but to work together, a dollar when throughout the area, what hundred times before it went out, so were thriving, and that is how it wasnt many communities like that. So we were grateful for that. And so now what we see happening, because i am seeing it in my own neighborhood, people are starting to, say i want to go back down south, so i am just grateful for this conversation, because i was one of those people, but im staying there because i feel responsibility to keep that mission going. We actually have a publication called brownsville live for we talk with the arts, the culture in the business in that community, thank you. It. Now that so i i want to do now is i have a number of questions i want to present to our panelists to try to expand on some of the topics and issues that we have discussed thus far, and i think that everyone up here as a particular intellectual and academic activists background, i think. But what binds us all together is really the study of black movement, so i want to start engaging a conversation with the panelists first and then take a while to open it up, and i left my watch upstairs, so i will ask maurice to keep track of time for me, please. I think you know the schedule. So the first thing i want to, do i think we are talking with the great migration in the classroom, and i think one of the things that we really do is try to frame it. What does immigration mean you . So it is a pretty standard question but i want you to all give your own intellectual and academic with professional expertise. How would we frame the great migration . What are some of the issues that both our audience of people watching this should be aware of . In that top, i talked about how the research on black migration had changed tremendously over the last two to three decades and so much of that research reflects the way i think we should be thinking about the great migration. When i started out in this field, there was a lot of scholarship to talk about the great migration i still black people had nothing to do with it. You know, they were pushed and pulled by forces beyond their control, and almost no one talked about how black people organize their own movement through their families and networks and the way they strategized about who should go to the north first, or the west first, and who should follow. These people were very creative and they helped to shape the migration in ways that we had not started to understand until the late 20th century and early 21st century and so i would say that one of the great starting point was to recognize that African Americans were part of the process, that they were making decisions on their own and they were making do with the conditions under which they operated with the. But they not only just made decisions to move the hard work. Another thing we have to do in framing the migration is to understand that they did not simply land in these northern cities and just stay there as workers. They turned their hands are creating Something Special in those cities, i am amazed at how they created a lot metropolis. They created black communities and the more i look at this research that we have at our disposal, the more we learn about how they build these communities in the north, but they had models of Community Building that they were building from the south, in southern cities across the late 19th, early 20th century, before the great migration in a way pick up steam, as they had already starting to build what they called black Business Districts in the south, and so when they hit chicago and built the black metropolis, it was not such a puzzle if you understood where these people were coming from, they had already starting to build barbershops and beauty shops and insurance companies, and so this notion of building up cities was something that they were able to creatively Carry Forward and expand within these northern communities so that is part of what i would say is, just give credence to the activist role that these migrants were playing, and there was a larger literature that gave some attention to the agency of black migrants, but the first wave of scholarship intended to take the migrants who had been political figures, more authenticated, within this new wave scholarship that came later started to show how much of a rule that people played, and so that becomes an important way to frame this issue, but we also need to keep in mind that our scholarship on these migration agents only brought in gradually to prospective women and gender dynamics in a way that should have been acknowledged earlier. We tend to talk about black man who wanted to the factories, the automobile plans, the meatpacking plans, for a while, there we neglected that other large component of the black working class who were women, working, many of them working in factories, but a huge proportion of them were working and household and personal service, but they were contributing to the building of these communities. No i dont personal note, i can add that my mother rules new relatives in every part of the country, you know, it is astounding but we had this network but as a High School Student who wanted to go to college, had no resources and one day i decided i was going to go to the military and so i just did not go to school one day and my mother took me out, i wanted to go to the u. S. Recruiting station, i wanted to join the u. S. Air force, and i dont want to stay another day in this town model, which was another thing that connection me to immigration experience but let me just give you this anecdote. I had no intention of going to college until i went back to school that next day, and i had a coach who met me almost in his home, in his doorway and, said you are not in class yesterday, where were you . I said well, i want to the u. S. Air force recruiting station, because i want to go to the military as soon as graduation heads, and it was close. There was nobody there. It closed for the day and i could not enroll,s and then he gave me this very worried look and he said, you . Go into the military . He said, you ought to go to college if theres any possible chance that you can go. And so i told my mother this story when i got home, i she asked me, she, said do you really want to go to college . And i said, of course id like to go, and so she said, she told me, you have an aunt who lives in a town with a big college, it is called evidenced, and illinois, and the college is northwestern university. s but she had no idea that northwestern, even if i can work and go to school, but i could hardly afford it, but you asked my aunt if i could live with her for a while and work my way through college, and indeed i did. I moved there and my aunt, by the way was a living domestic servant, and she literally helped me to get a footing in that town and to become a college student, graduate and i owe her a lot of credit for being able to transform my life. So is migration stories should include all of these dimensions, of gender, of class and all of the other aspects. I think i will end it there. What i want to echo everything we think about doctor trotter said. One of the things you mentioned, how much is we think of the types of institutions that come out of, this black institutions, we are sitting here in chicago, it tells us a heritage that we remember that these migrants are just go and do nothing. They dont go and sit on their laurels, but they are actively creating communities, actively creating black institutions but the thing i want to say is that when i teach the great migration at ten state, i am shocked by the number of students of all races who still subscribe to this idea of a bad south bend a good, north and we know that these migrants, when they get to chicago, when they get to, detroit when they get to new york, they are encountering new forms of Racial Discrimination. They are still not able to live where they want to live. Theyre still able to get the jobs they want to get and their kids are still going to some of the worst schools in those cities, and so one of the things that i do is that keeps the great migration, is i try to explain that this is a National Problem. It was a National Problem 100 years ago. It is still a National Problem today, and it is very dangerous if we make it a regional problem, if we say that this only exist in the south, even as im working on this book on educational migration, i mean, the stories of these students, whether they are going to chicago or cambridge massachusetts, or going to lawrence, kansas, they are still being treated in very ways that are very similar to the way that African Americans are being treated alabama, mississippi, and North Carolina, so as we teach the great migration, we machetes it correctly, and keeps the Promised Land really did not exist. The man we for Economic Opportunities for african america to the north but that was existed there as well. Amid im talking to the, mike can you hear me . We probably heard weve been talking about the great migration, and we have not really discussed from the perspective of communities that have been displaced, or a serious conversation around the rural to urban migration. You see, it is not just south of north, and so, one of the things that we must consider as we understand the ways in which black folks are migrating, is we have to consider urban renewal and gentrification, and the criminalization, the demonization, the disenfranchisement that has taken place as a result of. It how black communities are building and rebuilding. A lot of this conversation can be centered particularly, the rural conversation, in terms of the loss of black landownership. We see a major downturn in this. So as a result of these kinds of conversations, we often think about black folk who migrate as though they are being agents of change and the truth of the matter is they are also victims of change as well, so it is something to consider i think. Personally i think that in terms of framing the great migration, for me, because i am not historian, i am a literary scholar, is that usually im using the work of historians to help my students have a context to understand the art they were talking about, and the artist tend to always emphasize the agency of the migrants, and i think that there are sort of two ways of thinking about migration when we are dealing with art. One is actually the art forms themselves and how the art forms that immigration has produced, the new art forms, whether it is literature or visual are, the tell that migration story, but also the way that the great migration produced contemporary and modern black, art that it produced people who made much of what we come to think of as the most innovative art form of the 20th century, almost all of whom were migrants and children of migrants, and that experience is embedded in those forms or, so in framing migration for my students, those are the kind of things i actually think about, and i think what weve also seen is that people who do work in other art forms beginning to look at how central the migration was, a right now and thinking of a book by my colleague, charlie jones, about African American artists in los angeles, and she is looking at them, these are the people who either participated in the second great migration or who were the children of people who participated in the first great migration, and how that again transformed even notions of abstract are, and what road migration played in producing those people and the work that they create. I would say that i will just say that i 100 agree. I, also i am a college professor, i have not been teaching in a while but that is one of the ways that i would frame the migration and talking with the influence on our culture, as far as our music, the art, it is very important they know that one of the challenges i feel and im concerned about is that there are more and more people telling our story. And when i say our, story i think that when we are talking with African Americans migrating and the culture, and the influence, it to, me it needs to come from African Americans, and so there is a lot more people who are and im not sure where they might begin their information from, where there are more and more people telling the story but leaving a lot of holes, and so that is my concern. Before we started, i was unaware that there were so many connection to chicago and illinois here. I think you might be oh, well we almost had it for. Thank, you i want to move on a little bit. A lot of this conversation and i know youll spend a lot of time teaching but we had gone through this great migration kind of talk about the migration story as part of the narrative in South Carolina which is constantly talking about the last couple of days and how so many africans came to this land via charleston and we mentioned yesterday was about 80 of enslaved africans who came to america for their support. Whats important to talk about iran opposing other question i asked my students they understand what im coming from. When asked the panelist when we feel really strongly about the epiphany of what i want to talk about. Did you have an epiphany in the studies and talking about epiphany, a strong word for it but its a stat with migration and my powers were actually from alabama up. It just seems i cant talk well. My parents were from alabama and they migrated from the steel, coal regions of birmingham and the coal fields of West Virginia. My mother and my father migrated. And the late 1930s and the Great Depression and in West Virginia my father was a coal miner in 1957. In that relatively short time, as a look back, my mother and father at 14 children. During that time and when my father passed away in 1957, im just going to share my brothers were in the memoir about medicine, race and family. He talked about the family around his medical condition. He had a Heart Disease and was looking to live until were tired mentally decided to write his mom but in our family in 1857, my father became a homicide victim. My mother was left with 14 children in West Virginia and if you know anything about coal fields, women dont get jobs because no supporters in the domestic households or any other works for four women. My mother had never worked a day in her life and was a homemaker. They were looking to deal with and what she had as well and so she had a figure away to make a decision. She made a Decision Maker without migration in the code fields ensued ohio in a town call newcomers town ohio so my family really shut up the population laughs when we hit that place this particular experience i really didnt know forcefully when i talked about research or the African American experience this was Newcomerstown Newcomerstown which resemble things that we read and that newcomers were made fighters were made fun of and wouldnt really talk all that well so we had to fight that battle and during the time after my father died my mother actually decided that we move it moved to a small town so all of us in that small town and a whole migration after that that was evident in illinois but the shape or for me in terms of when i hit illinois and had a taste of chicago i understand something well have works. That was a great turning point and never gave up of the ideas of how i need to go to get a deeper understanding of a black urban history because that experience and when i was in chicago, they were exploding all the time and it was the Martin Luther king march and those things affected me greatly. We had a relation of experience to look at milwaukee. We had the migration to try to understand how it had become like that. The just to give you a different understanding of chicago. They were part of mississippi and louisiana this is my first big city and spent three weeks every summer in chicago and i hated it. Because my aunt lives in angela wood and it was different than the americans shop i had come from my cousin lived and looked at our shoes but they assumed we have been playing out of red clay or something and we are better than you all are and we felt great but i would look around but you dont have a yard and you dont have windows, we have to take the el train everywhere we go and we went to the white socks game and they were outside of the stadium and then we are taken to a cubs game and they were at the southside and when you went to graduate school you are taken a course with david in a big city and during this time, the storm known as Hurricane Katrina was in a cyclical kind away and i went to them and said i want to do something on the urbanization and now its just jokingly. They said to me, there are no cities in the American South. What they did, to encourage people to develop a concept that would help me measure how you understand the great migration. That is how the black south was found and how we made were made to understand that. This is all credit to James Anderson and some others, was to look at civil rights legislation as a point or a watershed moment of how you begin to see a ridge shift. Once i went to graduate school i said this is a cool town. But that being said, folks from chicago if you want to get down we can take that up outside. laughs all right, as historians, were used to talk about the past but i wanna talk about the president and pay a little bit of tension to whats going on in our cities and what is the Lasting Impact of this Mass Movement of people from the rural south and the urban south to the urban north. Think about how or the legacy of the great migration in black america. What i mean by that is that oftentimes, most of us who are engaging with people in the classroom and there are these moments in which they expressed their frustration and have to reinvent the wheel and how they think about issues and contemporary life and the objection of civil rights studies and talking about the great migration and theyre trying to make sense of this place and i want to talk about how you think our notions about these urban places and what is the role of the great migration and specializing the current urban environment. I want to talk about that very briefly. Im just going to ask you guys like take a look at a workers a man among arrival and the theme of that book was the legacy of African Americans in his country is that black people helped build this nation. In terms of its infrastructure and we are essential to that. One of the things that i think we sometimes overlook is that we didnt build this with cotton and rice and all of the agricultural staples. We will continue to build through the industrial system and great migration and the industrialization of america becoming a predominantly urban nation which had a lot to do with black people with migration and adding to the industrial system. That is the legacy that we should keep in mind that black people include to this nation. Our thinking now is that when you talk about and we have the danger and the poise they may be in terms of the economy in the new digital age. Black people i see in this nation and the medical facility in working at the bottom and also at the top and are still contributors. applause hello . Can you hear me . Im after up there. Can you hear me now . Okay. To piggyback off what he was saying i completely agree. We have a responsibility what we can use now in order to give them an opportunity of what can be done. I strongly believe and culturally relevant territory and we see as being in the 1920s and 30s where we have the first African American to have a bank in the chicago area and im only referring to the witnesses all over but im referring mainly to bronze all right now. We have the Jones Brothers that are the ones that pretty much had the lottery and the policy change. What they did, they made quite a bit of money and millions. They took that money and put it back into their community. So, when the students see that, it gives them something and a sense of hope and inspiration that i look forward to because all they hear about a lot of times to get so tired of hearing about we see ourselves as the help and we see ourselves as the Buckler Butler and what about the resilience of our people. Moore need to see is that we strive and we survive and we not only overcame the north was nothing and created something so incredible but to do that in that time and during that era, why cant we do that now . I think that is the way we should be looking at how we carry on the legacy moving forward. Im not a scholar of black educational history but i think there is an important lesson that we can learn from the migration and what really could be two of them in a particular development which we still see today. Im a native of North Carolina. Years ago, when the u. S. System was looking to reestablish and integrate the Public Institutions of that state, the government, suggested that they go to that school and do you know anything about North Carolina today . If you know anything about the State University in the northeastern part of North Carolina, that enrollment in that generation would be a promise to put a Pharmacy School which have not done it and were 2019. The legacy of the underdevelopment can see that it allows you to have students to go north to graduate school and is still impacting the offering we have today. This idea to promote resegregation today, we trace this idea of using public dollars in segregation two the dollars that originally in the 1920s. We have this earlier education migration. I want to go back real quick. One of the things that had an impact and in your family legacy and talks about culture and you bring a particular perspective here on your connection to the chicago defender which is this hugely important black event that takes place in chicago. Can you talk a little bit people know about the defender but they know that the landscape is changing as far as these two cultural phenomenons. It has. Recently, the chicago defender announced that their digital platform now and its a really sad day for me. I was in agreement with that because i believe that there is still something to be said but having that tangible tangible newspaper to back up and now when we fill the generation of 40 and upper still around and theyre gonna be around a long time we are still going for a newspaper. Thats one of the issues that we have to deal with recently and thats why i feel different. When i was talking about the imprint, we also have the legacy of the lincoln parade which is the second largest african prayed in the United States and its been that way the 30s all the way till today. There has been a quite change because the climate has changed. Even the neighborhood itself has changed i will tell you right now a house island for 300,000 dollars five years ago is now going for 1. 3 Million Dollars. We saw that yesterday on my black and i dont have 1 Million Dollar house and i wish i did but things have changed quite a bit what. Does that say for what i have to do my responsibility is im going to keep this going and i have to embrace the change but help the people that come into the neighborhood that dont understand or know the history or really get to know what it can mean to our community. Because, it is a yearround focus that gives an opportunity to keep them off the streets. We practice he around to get that one day more than we even imagine. These businesses that are small to showcase what they do and the organizations are given a chance to social port for these views. Its always been and this is a challenge or Something Like that going into the climate because of the crime in chicago and i fought, all the way up until that the Police Department just to have simple things for our kids like not trying to shorten the parade and stopping from doing them such great things and theres so many things are different and when my grandfather was running the parade. So, maurice mentioned in his work in the black south. He talked about it in his presentation but of the reverse migration. Its a very real thing and part of the great migration and the black perspective talking about claiming the racist society and any of these urban communities that have moved him to and we look back at whats going on now and its another gentrification in back population and states and in the state of illinois where we have 40,000 less black people a year when they destroy the Public Housing in the black communities of chicago. Entire communities disappeared i give you an example. The urban landscape as one of the largest Public Housing developments in the United States and 40,000 plus people live there and they just disappear. Where they go and we see the population and we see the gentrification and we live in a city called brownsville and black people reclaimed that name with brown skin as putting it as something positive. This question really is for morris. How do you have this reverse migration . What should we know about this phenomenon . Thank you for the question. One of the things that we must except that historians have looked at the period between 1965 up and being the second reconstruction in Ronald Reagan s america and we see the shift from the Information Age and the conditioning of all these Different Things and we also talk about crackle cain and the aids epidemic and we see the relation of the police. Detroit dollars i was set aside for drugs instead of public education. I say that because oftentimes when we talk about crack cocaine, but on urban faces no one talked about how it decimated the people and they louisiana a low country and the alabama and georgia black belt. It demolished those counties. A lot of the work that you discussed in bill clintons three strike role and affecting the population by 800 and mostly black males in a city like atlanta with the jackson winds mostly were black and now it is shifting. Boise is the catalyst for this attack on black spaces and the exploitation of doctor kings legacy as a result of atlanta winning the winter games. We have 33 years ahead of getting rid of black hope and we have this idea of migration in terms of a city like atlanta and the red belt and the showdowns to take place. The fact is the like atlanta failed a generation of black students we are under attack. Just so happens and lantana is called under the booster islam nozzle places like charlotte, charlottesville, jackson and so much of the attention of the studies have primarily been in northeast and west coast in terms of migration. We would understand that this is how things are playing out. The last thing im going to say is that black folk got incited near the University Center where you are robber shot there is almost about 650,000 dollars. It is frightening black people out. We have to consider the impact and figure out a way to fight back and thats what we must educate ourselves on. Were coming close to our time for the unable and ask one more question. We will switch back to our academic hats and if we were to give advice to the future in future generation who are in this room. What advice would you give to them about the recurring questions or issues that will deal with in terms of migration today . This is for everyone. On the cultural front. One thing that we still need to be done that would emerge in the panel is about migration as part of a larger system in terms of our experience in the hemisphere. Thursday ways of movement that synthesize our agencies and what were calling the migration relationship of new opportunity and many of these migrations of been about displacement. On the cultural front, what kind of cultural fraud emerged when people who are products of these gifted by gracious come together and one of the great migration places in harlem, people migrated from the south to the north but also had people coming from africa and from the caribbean. What happens when these are encountered and what a conflict and productive things come out of the history of migration and there is still a lot of possibilities there. I thought the questions would go into a direction talking about setting the agenda for the next round of research a, little bit more than we have so far. Our own thinking is that in these three areas and some of them have come up here we have this return migration that doesnt require a whole lot more work or a lot more cities but i think its going to be a prime item on the Agenda Settings for the next generation. Also, you touched on the transnational African People into the United States and lets do a lot more work on that dimension of how africans are transforming what we call African American life. The other thing gentrification is a movement in which backed people recaptured some of the exercise in some of the disrupted developments that are taking place and African American life. These are the items that we put on the table and young people in terms of all other issues that i think the next generation will discover on their own and we have a couple of items that has to do with the micro convention of the new agenda and part of some of the recent studies in African American life and the way those barbershops have functioned and in the last six months its a way in which black barbershops in the early years were forcing some ways of conforming to white clients only. Now weve got some of the study showing that black people were showing up in barbershops instead of light and theyre getting incensed that the black barber wouldnt serve them. Also, in North Carolina, there was someone who wouldnt serve black people in the aftermath of Martin Luther king. They had to march around to make him given to the serving a black people. This micro story might need a study of how black businesses became desegregated. Especially when you think about a lot of the black witnesses who cater to white customers and hes what customers sometimes insisted that they were only white and how is it that black people will look to gain service that previously had not and there would be a lot of those. But here is my take, ive been working on these issues for a while and i was astounded about how the literature is now and how we need to make sense of what this means. We need good general studies now and returning to war and trying to understand and put together sentences or narratives about black migration in different places. For example, when i started working on these issues there was consensual easing of the nations and the preindustrial theories. Now, weve got a lot of studies that look at back black Population Movement and voluntary migration and i think we need some sentences that form what the black migration look like and the theory before the civil war. Also, for the industrial field, were in need of some sentences that will get through all of those freds threats of race and to create some stories not only to think big about where we are, for sentences but the other reason i wanted to do that and sentences will allow this and also other underline and will discover new agenda. Well take up to task in framing those things that has implications for how we get all of this scholarship to the public when to make it more accessible. We will have to do more in that as well. Thank you. applause so, i think our panel is ready to accept questions from the audience. Before we get started, i have an announcement to make. I was given the snow at the journal of African American history reception that its available outside the door and everyone has an invitation to attend. With that we will open up the floor with questions. See the of all id like to thank everyone on the panel and the scholarship and all the things that you do applause much of what ive been hearing today and im in my late seventies now and theres a few of us still around my world story somebody who went to the plantation and ask mr. Douglas if they havent made any money and picked up seven kids and took into chicago and then took on the detroit, didnt make it in detroit i went back to chicago and both instances, both families made a few changes inaudible i went back to alabama and when all the way to alabama and he was segregation in chicago and we were at the liquor store inaudible also, i looked out of the window i saw people throwing inaudible thats how they delivered one of my own because inaudible applause laughs way, my father would always tell me that story and that is hilarious and i love it. Thank you for sharing that. Hi, thank you for your presentation today. Im curious about the work that you have done with African American religious discretion and it had happened at the top for example in all of these various forms. Im thinking about the graduate students who took care of it while they were there as blacks worked in the Industrial Way and had the involuntary organization and in the cultural forms tower at work. Does everyone if you have something in African American churches that supported what they were doing . First ill say, the best has been done on black church and if youre not familiar with the work i would suggest to look it up. Thats right, many other students that go north or go west they talk about two black institutions and the black sororities and are going to a place like missouri which have black churches and kansas and had a place to stay because its not and they churches and actually have booty. And the women in the easter churches that are committed to their success and you blast sororities and the u. S. Will not allow and were oftentimes would fill the resources in black students were in the house and something very interesting to me was both graduate and the chapter brought houses in des moines kansas and they couldnt rent a room at an individual black families home in the chapter meters in these houses that were provided by this royalties. Its interesting to see how that has to help the students make it. Its in one territory and these institutions are not welcoming in any way. I would second that but i would also suggest that people look that theres a recent book entitled by a woman named soviet chair and malik and in the development and the women of color and black migrants are essential to black culture and the whole region and Community Like in chicago, philadelphia and those places but youre absolutely right there. There is another group of historian and recently published a book in chicago and one of the interesting things which my parish was one of the centers and the church and now as the African American patrol men and racism within the Police Department and one thing they talk about in chicago is that there is more black catholics in chicago than louisiana. That is a phenomenal experience and who are in the college of charleston right now. I want to invite a literary historian to take the task in many ways, its just a little piece of it inaudible are these just narratives . And in a democracy and what if the individual tried for the migrant . They were just struck, here you have a totally African World thats being damaged inaudible she pushes her way in the black world into the white world and you have to learn how to create some more creative and imaginative and moments were exaggerating to how to shape the language in ways that is a really dynamic flow in the hole of the experience. He said it. laughs theres not much i can say to that. That is what our does. On one hand, we had a series of narratives that happened in the shift in population and people were seeking freedom but our art is also what it looked like, what it men and what the intentions were and the meaning to it for us and i think they also imagine the possibility that we have not experienced yet and we talk about exactly what our does. Its another set of narratives and another way and the narrative that allows us to speak about our experiences. I think we have time for a couple more questions. Good evening everyone and i wanted to ask an important question when we talk about the discussion and i want to ask everyone in the path of the identification law. What would it look like . How its not enough time . laughs Congress Passed an anti jennifer occasion law to be able to hold places that would not be able to reach out. applause reparation, 40 acres, blocks, buildings, all of that. Schools, airplanes. laughs frank you for your presentation. I dont know youre going to go there with the actual migration is that its something important to look at now. When we talk about African Americans whats the question about who what the legacy of the great migration and wanted to ask the panel, the human vision it in the way we see the current migration abroad and going abroad. Is there a next app or a different version to the great migration . Thats something that not a lot of people are looking at. I appreciate that question. There is a book about africans indiana and im drawing a blank. Its a given game. This is something that we need to take seriously and just be fabric of urban migration so i think yes, we would need more of that and we need to integrate that about black migration. Just to piggyback on that. We see these working relationships with the African Americans. The current one is looking at africans in the first 30 years of the 20th century. We look at the black nationalist theaters inside africa and you go to a university for their degree and theres a marshal in the constitution after the independence and this is not new. In 2019, these African Americans had relationships another continent and there is a long history of that and they created this idea of separatism between black people here and black people on the continent. Thats not true in history doesnt where that out. One thing to that is the bulk of the black nostalgia is the implication and the current example of somebody like ambassador young, whose job was to present american capitalism to stave off the soviets. From south america, caribbean, continent after of africa. When he becomes mayor, Ronald Reagan thinks about taking funding out of atlanta and had to rely on a relationship with the continent and the black world to invest in a city like atlanta which is really to global cities. Ambassador and the mayor and its in the sun and other oil that is used from atlanta comes from nigeria. Its a real conversation in terms of how the businesses and this is a major component of that and when it comes to places like jackson mississippi we see that and we have conversations with black alabama and brazil that partnering with black voters will. One more. Thank you very much and i wanted to say we want to control the narrative and talking about the renaissance inaudible the knee grow world with rodgers was brought in that part of the renaissance. applause were short of time. Id like to thank you all for coming but giving our panelists a round of applause. applause