The Historical Association for putting together this remarkable conference. And for inviting me to facilitate this panel. This conference, like its at aerpart in 1983, stands historical crossroads. Themeslarly around the of this panel race, power and urban space. The projects we will hear about ,ver the next hour and a half the questions at stake in this panel touch of the heart of modern africanAmerican History. On questions of the structure in agency. On questions of freedom and unfreedom. On questions of continuity and discontinuity. The questions of slavery and what has changed and in what ways, and why. It touches on issues of segregation and integration terms that are misunderstood in contemporary political discourse but are at the heart of how we conceptualize the history of urban space. 19 83, the field of the africanamerican urban history was very much in the shadow of the urban uprisings of the lake 1960s. Or as they were called then urban riots, perceived as a product of pathology. Inan historians emphasize they are coming to grips of the consequences of the urban uprisings, they emphasize continuity and the structure of oppression. Perhaps best summarized in the title of august meiers synthesis, from plantation to ghetto. Bonding together African Americans at different points in the american past. The urban scholarship in that time focused on the process of , at was called ghettoization term that had originally derived from a description of jewish communities in venice and applying it to africanamericans and other ethnic groups in the United States. Those scholars explored ghettoization and were concerned primarily with large racially africanamerican communities largely in the north and south, focusing on places like harlem, chicago, detroit, cleveland, east st. Louis and others. The 1980s, there was a new generation of historians, many of them graduate students in 1983 and finishing dissertations. They were inspired by the social movements of the 1960s. Weather on plantations or in the city. The process off urbanization and transformation usually issued the term ghetto which they found offensive, and acused on the ways in which process of africanamerican urbanization could be seen as a process of transplantation or Community Formation. These were rigorous and brilliantly researched books and articles, drawing from untouched archives, exploring the then mostly forgotten histories of African American fraternal and so marginal organizations. Churches, social clubs, dance and labor unions. And reinterpreted african migration northward as liberatory, it even as the best of them certainly knowledge to way in which the land of hope full oface that was unmet hopes and opportunities. This builds on one of the keywords in politics and social movements and social scientific and humanistic scholarship the term community. Development,nomic or the blank community. The black community. The womans community. The Way Community creates affective ties that pulls people together and looked at the ways in which urban institutions in everyday life fostered a community that offered resources to challenge these into many of the political economy or a racist regime or systematic discrimination. A buttress against a ,ehumanizing political economy against vicious racism, against violence. Optimisticomething or romantic about these notions of Community Formation. We heard critiques of that this morning. Implicitly and explicitly, in the discussion about unity. But at the core of both of these andects, ghettoization Community Formation was an emphasis on power. Whether it be power mobilized to the grassroots to transform a political transform a brutal and racist system or from up above. One of the most recent terms has been to mix up these discussions of power. To look at the ways in which those at the bottom unwittingly reinforce a misallocation of resources across metropolitan space and how those from the topdown may have played a greater role than those who argued for Community Formation suggested. See a statears, we of Extraordinary Community studies. Setis of the different groups that constituted what once was perceived as a broad or unified community. Chicagos south side. Community politics in 1920s harlem. Gamblers, the respectable and transgressive. ,e have working merging now clear spaces in cities, looking known asys in cities interest zones. On the borders of africanamerican neighborhoods how they became interesting places. We have works on topics that were unimaginable in the 1960s or 1980s, on the history of africanamerican landlords whose pursuit of profits reinforce jim crow as they embrace the rhetoric of civil rights. In the aftermath of ferguson, baltimore, chicago africanamerican metropolitan history, the history and the ways in which race is constructed, deconstructed, undermined in metropolitan space has moved to the center. Something of a partn to the emphasis of of the scholarship on ghettoization in the 1960s19 80s. Whether that be the police or the car shall state or predatory lenders or Real Estate Brokers or housingpremacists officials imposing a racial map on metropolitan landscapes. This, we could call it racial pessimism and it is something we see embodied through the work of the most influential historian over the last five or six years, not anybody on this panel but the brilliant tom hussey coat who delved into urban history and made this story of the transformation of metropolitan space by race and the political economics and racial power structures the center of his demand for rations in an atlantic article that was more widely read that our most important interesting books and articles. [laughter] as we think about that moment in 1983 and our historiographical moment today, there are a number of questions i want to put on the table for our panelists. One of them is, have we come full circle . What is the relationship of past processes of exploitation and segregation with what we see playing out in the places of streets like baltimore and ferguson . What about continuity and discontinuity . What about the freedom dreams and the emancipatory project and the liberatory project that we see at the core of africanAmerican History from the civil war and reconstruction through the struggles of the century, through the africanamerican freedom struggle in the south and in the . Orth and west how does that relate to a larger story . And how do we think about the projects of scholars in a national and International Context . Dubois at ways of w. E. B. Saw a race as the problem of the 20th century, but not as a problem of the 20th century, but a problem that spanned the globe. Our panelists will address different facets of this question. We will do this in order. , much important work on slavery and africanamericans in the antebellum north. The author of a new book on jim crow and africanamericans in miami and the caribbean world. Joh trotter, a key figure who really invigorated scholarship with his breaking work on milwaukee, concerning labor and africanAmerican History and , who has worked on the question of segregation in a global context. With no further it do, i turned the floor over to them. Thank you. It is a thrill to be here this afternoon. I want to thank everyone who has made this possible. A few weeks ago at Howard Universitys commencement, president obama argued that america is a better place today and it was when he graduated college in the early 1980s. As part of his litany of progress aimed directly at Donald Trumps repetitive braying to take our country back, he focused on the transformation of some of americas cities have undergone. New york city had enjoyed a decade marked by crime and deterioration and near bankruptcy. According to obama, crime rates are down and American Cities have undergone a renaissance. Embedded in both visions of American Cities are assumptions about what makes cities successful and how they figure in the nation success. But few of these definitions by urbanians, politicians or dwellers themselves attend to africanamericans in cities. In fact, the reverse is true. The africanamerican presence has been tied to a cities failures. And cities with large africanamerican populations are not seen as a romantic of the United States. Regardless with the checkered ,ays the public has viewed this africanamerican populations in cities have grown, even through the 1970s19 80s. On northerncused cities as the main beneficiaries of the great migration, southern cities experienced this expansion. The generalf how public has viewed cities, africanamericans have seen urban areas as a site of opportunity and potential. What do we mean by successful cities . The centralityis of the city to the state, region. A city like detroit near flint, michigan indicate when cities are a narrowing of economic and opportunity that becomes a condition. Rcing the inability to maintain in extremeure and cases, catastrophic disasters and states or regions feel little opportunity or responsibility. I dont have to release audio of what happened in flint or detroit in the face of infrastructure decline. Context of judging urban successes and failures, the history of africanamericans are paradoxical and full of surprises. There is no moment in africanamerican urban history that was easy and yet some sought out urban spaces with pathways to greater freedom, autonomy and economic and political success in the 19th and 20th centuries. Regardless of africanamerican self perception of the urban people, others often viewed them to the safety of the cities. My larger paper examines moments in africanAmerican History. I will briefly rehearse those moments here. Africanamericans were foundational to north American Cities. Cost labor maintained basic infrastructure and was vital to the military defense of colonies including defense against native americans. Most of these cities were routed economically. Either as points of selling slaves for as provisions for other slave economies. As he moved to the end of slavery in the north, we have our first paradox in terms of africanamerican experiences in cities. Committee was not in the north but in the south. What are we to make of the fact that new orleans, the largest et in the country, 653 blacks held in real estate. Philadelphia was a distant second with 77 black People Holding real estate. In new orleans, 60 of skills black men held jobs. Centers, feweran than 10 of black males held jobs. Less than 1 of blacks were Property Owners. These upside down figures are a result of the paradoxes of black freedom. Space forowed more blacks in the economy under slavery and freedom. The precivil war era says it all. In other words, if whites did not own blacks, they refused to employ them as free people. Over the course of two emancipation eras in the north and south, whites prohibited blacks from full participation in the economy. It was whites who are damaged by slavery, reference the previous panel. That the impact of White Supremacy came into southern cities following the ends of slavery following the civil war. Tote slaves used violence control flex cities. One area that is a story we could examine more closely is the violence that occurred in smaller urban areas that reflects the widespread white supremacist anger against black economic subsidence and activism. Nation,er cities in the blackwhite populations led by provided, blacks services among themselves and also to whites and could truly influence politics. The 1898 race riot is and will magic of this moment. The Commission Report states, prior to the riot, africanamericans were employed in all segments of the workforce. That, as skilled artisans, jobs declined. Numbers working in lower status jobs increased. Drive used violence to africanamericans out of neighborhoods is a expression of jim crow. It shows the degrees by which black populations are under white control. Removed. Mpletely by the time of the postworld war ii Civil Rights Movement and the resulting desegregation, almost a century of ideology meant that integration with africanamericans as part of what would make a successful city was unthinkable to most whites. Three decades after brown, marked with struggles the housing, politics and occupations across the nation. In the early 1970s, cities experienced absolute declines in the number of whites and a rise in percentages of lax as part of the populations. There were black successes to be found in these times. Numerical, the majority gave them access to political power that they had not experienced since the reconstruction era. Publicrporate and service jobs were widely available and the growth of a black middle class followed more quickly than anyone would have predicted. Lacks successes remained uneven and cities in america from the 1970s19 90s were economically weak. That was as a result of industrial wealth and a difficult u. S. Economy and a general sense that cities were not the center of the nations wellbeing. In addition to the structural issues, the fault of urban failure often enough was black in discussions of crime, political corruption and levels far lower than the unequal policies of the segregation era, joblessness. To oakland, if there was a problem in the city, the black presence was part of it. Should not surprise us today, many cities, renaissance maze a displacement of blacks through all classes who held on through the political the investments of the postcivil rights era. Conversations about economic verbalization decreased that were completely. One young person moving to detroit following graduation from college described his excitement i moved to detroit because the city is full of empty spaces waiting for me and us to fill them up. Unfortunately, this wellmeaning remark is full of assumptions. Those who built those empty spaces. Lived inns that they thus,ore they arrived americas renaissance is complicated but the same dog chasing its tail through the population with which blacks and areas,circle urban driving each other in and out of cities rather than sharing space. The possibility for urban integration has only existed at limited times and in spaces. When the racial hierarchy was clear. We have yet to live into a moment of freedom and equity. Two words that should always be linked together. Thank you. [applause] good afternoon, family. Good afternoon. In july 1920rribly what couldnt say he wasnt warned. They told him. Miamis colored board of trade the best and respectable colored people should consider immigrating to miami. A collection of black american landlords took out ads across afro america, maintaining they would assist the authorities and making it unpleasant for the low elements of all races. Harvard brooks was low and criminal. A man born in the bahamas, he had been accused of sexually assaulting his female employer, white. Daytonajust outside beach, his brains bashed. Before his death, he had been shackled and seated between white Law Enforcement officers, traveling on a train to jacksonville, or he was to stand trial. But according to accounts, and he jumped through the train window to his death. Again, being shackled and seated. Many black people who suspected foul play did not blame the white officers. Ofy blamed the colored board trade. Frankly, so do i. Understand that the death of brooks represents a complex relationship between blackness and property. As property. This i described his death in my book as a way to explore political intrigue. Jumpingis serves as a off point for thinking through one possible future for the africanamerican past. A desegregated accounting of black racism. That advancing the public debate and meaning of africanAmerican History, we need to take a full or, structural look at White Supremacy into our next generation of scholarship. Understanding the entangled history of civil rights and Property Rights. That requires facing archives, artifacts and accounts where violence was deemed effective in the agenda of lives. When the agency threatens the lives, or does claim the lives people. Lack to make this more concrete. I returned to the opener. Which wasd to a group an organization that argued miami was not part of america. Apparently a majority of black people in the 1920s were reddish subjects from the caribbean. The overseas club grin schools on the british curriculum and history. D they asserted that jim crow laws did not apply to them. The colored board of trade had other ideas. For theimed to speak progressive negroes who are citizens of miami. The advocated the expansion of of Law Enforcement but also military involvement in the pacific, latin america and caribbean sea. They also helped to corral the low and criminal. Lethalced with accusations by his alleged white victim, brooks searched for refuge. He was retrieved by an armed posse of american blacks, led by the colored board of trade. It was these black americans who handed him over to white officials. What were the negroes thinking . Sense of what any personal motivations were involved, it was one year since the red summer of 1919 which saw white terrorism sweep across three dozen American Cities. His fate in that context seems foreseeable. Overseas club members found a to attack black american businesses. They organize boycotts of black american storefronts and assaulted black americans on the street. And they organize marches to assert their control of color town streets. What appears to be a moment of unity mustack this be appreciated as steps taken by colored people towards competing visions of racial solidarity. Competing notions of property. If anything, property. The pursuit of property drove black peoples freedom dreams. From the hope of emancipation to the promise of reconstruction, lack people traveled far and to buy property on which to settle down. Of ownership was owning oneself, taking a full or hold outside of bondage. Property, like so much postemancipation, existed as a resu