thinking in two very different ways

Exploring African Americans in cities requires thinking in two very different ways. First, we can think about what has been written, or what scholars like to call “the literature” (for example, in my last blog entry I briefly discussed some classic and/or outdated literature, but also a new writing). We can also think about the actual history, some of which ends up in the literature. Both ways are deeply personal for me as they help explain my family history. My earliest years were spent in Coconut Grove, a small community in Miami, Florida. Above are two family photos. When I was five, we moved out into the county. People in “the Grove” joked that we lived in “the Boondocks.” Back then, only sand dunes sat where the Dolphins and other teams now play in a big stadium. Historian Raymond Mohl tells us that local and regional civic and business leaders knew for decades that African Americans would be pushed into the northwest section of the county where I lived (though many of my Bahamaian relatives, as did many, stayed put in the city our forefathers helped build). Mohl’s work and that of other scholars, including Robert Self, help make clear the degree to which race, space and power are reliable prongs to the urban history story. But Miami, and Florida in general, were different from trends seen elsewhere. How can we critically think about this dynamic? Is it always a racial one? How does class, gender and ethnicity nuance what is learned?