on the issue of shared struggle for Afro Brazilian and African Americans

Here are photos from last week's Afro Brazilian poster project, which was spearheaded by Dr. Teresa Cribelli, Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Alabama. Dr. Cribelli's class and students taking "African Americans in the City" with me curated several posters, which help tell the story of the shared "Civil Rights" struggles of Afro Brazilians and African Americans. Last week's events included a Brown Bag lunch and two lectures by visiting Afro Brazilian scholar Amilcar Pereira. Aaron Posey, a student enrolled in "African Americans in the City,"  gave a short presentation at the exhibition reception. Dr. Lucy Curzon, Assistant Professor in the Art and Art History Department at the University of Alabama, provided initial guidance on how to "narrate" the posters, which among many things, unveil the ways in which the meanings of "blackness" differ greatly between the United States and Brazil even as responses to "blackness" are often the same. In short, to be black, or in particular, to be of African descent is often to be one who faces considerable struggle because of one's ancestral past.

Curatorial statement from students in this course.

Two students viewing posters they helped curate.

Aaron Posey listening to Dr. Amilcar Pereira.

Amilcar Pereira speaking in Bidgood Hall.

"he was like a father figure"

This past Monday, the students met for the final time this semester. The lesson before them: observing the ways in which Arnold Hirsch's "second ghetto" thesis poses tensions with the University of Miami football team's success in the 1980s and early 1990s. In 1983, Hirsch explored the ways in which the postwar migration of African Americans and segregationist practices led to the creation of "second ghettoes" in Chicago. His thesis could be applied to other communities  including Miami. As Raymond Mohl wrote in his study of postwar Miami, African Americans residing in this city were often encouraged to move to other communities by realtors and policy makers. These "new" communities to which blacks moved were often initially inhabited by white residents. When whites fled, these communities became "second ghettoes." The topic resonated with me personally as I grew up in Miami and never considered the four bedroom house in Carol City (now Miami Gardens) to which my parents moved  in 1972 from Coconut Grove  as a ghetto home (It was very different from the Kingsway two-bedroom duplex we started out in in "The Projects" of Coconut Grove, now called West Grove. I guess "ghetto" does not always mean slums, or the built environment, as much as it means segregation). During my preliminary exams, I read Mohl's work and learned that, indeed, my neighborhood was a planned community for African Americans who originally lived in other portions of then-Dade County. The community in which I lived was filled with residents who moved from Liberty City, another neighborhood created especially for African Americans including those who lived in crowded conditions in Coconut Grove and Overtown. Some of their forced removal had to do with the building of I-95, which displaced at least 10,000 African Americans residing in Overtown alone. So how does this narrative relate to the University of Miami football team? Well, some of the team's players had roots in these very neighborhoods, which some observers believed was reflected in their behavior on and off the field. In the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the team's success during the mid-1980s to early 1990s, the students in this class learned how the team, despite their difficult beginnings and ongoing trials, some self-inflicted, still brought pride to the city of Miami, which had suffered negative publicity following civil disturbances in the city in the early 1980s. I attended this University during the late 1980s and saw the success up close. The team's legendary achievements began under the leadership of Howard Schnellenberger in the 1980s and continued under the guidance of other coaches including Jimmy Johnson and Dennis Erickson. Part - though not all - of the team's spectacular performance, which led to four national championships between 1983 and 1991, had to do with the ways in which some of the African American football players bonded in particular with Johnson, a  white man from a working class background in South Texas.  This dynamic ultimately shows again the complexities of America's racial history. Here are excerpts from the students' in-class short reflections on the ways in which race and class help tell the story of the football team's success and how the second ghetto thesis, ironically, can be seen in that success. Kalynn: "In Miami, [many] African Americans were displaced from their homes because of the development of interstates."
Christin: "[Many] realtors knew the [pay-off in capitalizing] on black [migration] and used it to their benefit.
Alexis: "The [football] players were reflecting life in the city in which they [once] played [Optimist] football for their parents and neighbors."
Roosevelt: "[The] football players were taught how to play football ...at a young age...The big high school games would be played at the Orange Bowl."
Raven: "The community that created their hard lives has resonance with the life that [Coach Jimmy Johnson] lived."
Shanece: "[Many of] the football players came from 'second ghetto' [communities].  Coach Johnson also grew up in a [working class] household."
Lauria: [Some of] Johnson's players were from 'second ghettoes' (ie. they were or their [ancestors] were often displaced by the building of [certain communities specifically for African Americans]. [These communities] had a lot of influence on these [young men].
Aaron: "[Coach] Johnson had a special bond with his players...Although they were of different races, Johnson and his players were able to create their own sense of community."
Shariyah: "A lot of the unfairness [surrounding the players] had to do with the conservativeness of the [United States], [but] a white man ...was like a father figure to the minorities on the team." On another note, some of the students were able to see the fruits of their work on an Afro Brazilian poster exhibition. Some even attended talks by Afro Brazilian scholar Amilcar Pereira. See photos from that exhibit, which they helped curate, in  this course's next blog posting.

Black Bahamians and Miami history

Still image of Bahamians in late nineteenth century Miami.

 Esther Rolle, the late actress, starred in "Good Times."

I look forward to this Monday's class because I get to share with the students some of the history of Miami, Florida, my hometown. I also get to discuss the history of the migration of Bahamian people to Miami in the late nineteenth century. My  paternal relatives on my father's side are descendants of Bahamians, who initially settled in the Coconut Grove section of Miami. This immigrant group, a key labor source, figured into the early development of South Florida, which began in earnest with the construction of the Florida East Coast Railway in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This railway connected cities and ports around the country to ports in Miami, which was incorporated in 1896. These ports are just a few minutes drive from Coconut Grove, which is still inhabited by African Americans including descendants of people from the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, a country of several hundred islands in the Atlantic Ocean to the east of Miami.  In one of my earliest blog posts, I mentioned how I spent the first five years of my life in  Coconut Grove, the oldest community in the city and what is now Miami-Dade County. Many people of African and Bahamian descent from this neighborhood -  including some (though not all) members of my own family  -eventually relocated to other sections of the county. Some of us were pushed by segregationist practices facing other people of African descent around the country. Such movement led to the creation of what Arnold Hirsch has called "second ghettoes." Second ghetto communities were often earlier inhabited by whites who fled to other areas in response to the influx of African Americans, desiring better housing during the postwar period, a time that witnessed the migration of African Americans from the rural south to the North, West, and farther South. This was the second such migration in the twentieth century. Those arriving in Miami might have met the descendants of Bahamians who had been here since the city's beginnings.  I look forward to teaching the "second ghettoes" thesis to the students and making linkages between it and the recruitment of African American young men to the University of Miami football program in the early 1980s. I was an undergraduate at this university at the time and enjoyed watching this team help put Miami back in the national spotlight though not always in the way that many observers desired. Uncovering how this dynamic imparts more information about race, class and even black masculinity in  urban life will be a key task for me and this class. In this posting, you can see a a photograph of the late actress Esther Rolle, who is  of Bahamian descent, and a YouTube clip of Sidney Poitier, a notable Bahamian, who won "Best Actor" at the Academy Awards in 1964. Notice how he holds the hands of Anne Bancroft, an Academy Award-winning white actress and Best Actor presenter, something  unthinkable for many living in the South in that year. There is also a photograph of  early black Bahamians attending a tea party at The Barnacle, a nineteenth century house in Coconut Grove built by Ralph Middleton Munroe, an early white settler and seaman. Some day I plan to research Miami's history  in relation to people of Bahamian descent.

on migration and urban life in many contexts

Today, Dr. Franky Abbott shared the dynamics of "return migration to Atlanta with the students in this class. This topic was one of her key research interests when she was a doctoral student at Emory University. Using Census data, she studied the migratory patterns of African Americans as well as  people of African and West Indian descent into Atlanta since 1990. Interestingly, she is cautious about finding parallels between this trend and the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North from 1910 to 1970. As mentioned in the last blog posting, some of the Atlanta black migrants in more recent years were actually Northern born individuals, among them New Yorkers, who migrated to Atlanta in search of a better and more affordable quality of life. I could well relate to her lecture as I know several people who lived in New York and New Jersey, but have relocated to Atlanta in the last ten years. In fact, as a student at the University of Miami more than twenty years ago, I had a classmate from Boston who greatly desired to move to Atlanta upon graduation. For her and others, this city appeared as a "black Mecca." Abbott also pointed out that some migrants are Southern born individuals who felt a "call" to return home. This portion of her lecture made me think of the motion picture, "Down in the Delta," which concerns an African American Chicago-based woman (Alfre Woodward)  who travels to Mississippi to reconnect with her familial past. She meets her cousin (Wesley Snipes), an Atlanta lawyer who represents the educated black elite  represented in Abbott's study though one who migrates to Atlanta not from the North, but from Mississippi. "Called home" where he questions his seeming success, he forms a bond with his cousin of more modest means. She, too, is changed by their meeting and establishes a sense of purpose and regains her confidence as an unmarried mother of two. After Abbott's lecture, the students briefly discussed their final paper topics, which will all -  with the exception of one that focuses on storefront churches in the context of African American northward migration during the twentieth century and another that draws attention to the ways in which skin complexion played a role in the success of African American Civil Rights leaders -  juxtapose the idea of African American life in cities in conversation with a primary source. The sources the students selected include hip hop music, visual imagery of University of Alabama football fans, the Oklahoma City Thunder NBA basketball franchise, three televisions shows ("Scandal," "Good Times" and "The Cosby Show"), and two films ("The Five Heartbeats" and "The Princess and the Frog").  Next week, they will use Raymond Mohl's research on Miami to explore race relations and Arnold Hirsch's thesis on the "making of second ghettoes" (this thesis was the subject of an earlier blog entry). This lesson will involve their watching a clip of The U," an ESPN 30 for 30 production focusing on the University of Miami football team. At stake will be making connections between race relations in Miami across time and the ways in which race and urban life inform the experiences of African American UM football players during their winning years in the 1980s and 1990s.  I look forward to our next and final class meeting for the semester. This was my first stand-alone course. It has truly been a pleasure and, indeed, a privilege learning more about urban black life in America while teaching this subject to an outstanding group.

returning/turning South

Too often when people think of the migratory patterns of African Americans, most think of the Great Migration, or the early twentieth century movement of this population from the rural South to the urban North in search of a better quality of life. Tomorrow, Franky Abbott, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alabama, will discuss the "return migration" of African Americans to the South during the late twentieth century.The students will, among other things, learn how "return migration" reflects not only Northern-born African Americans who relocate to the South owing to a desire to make their dollars go further, particularly as they grow older, but also a younger Northern-born population that also desires the allure of Southern cities like Atlanta. These return migration patterns also include Southern-born African Americans who have a "call" to return home. This latter  population often settles in rural areas of the South. Using an article that draws on the research of many scholars including Carol Stack, Abbott will discuss this subject, which was a key research interest for her when she was a student at Emory University. Abbott's areas of expertise also include immigrant migration into the United States and digital humanities. We welcome Abbott and look forward to hearing her lecture. The class will come prepared with questions or comments about her assigned readings. As an aside, while thinking about tomorrow's lecture, I was struck by the ways in which it poses tensions, however distantly racially and politically, with a story I heard on NPR this afternoon. The story concerns David Downie, a man  who trekked through rural France. Along the way,  he met Parisians who - like some migrating northern and urban African Americans, especially well-to-do ones - moved to the countryside in search of better lives away from France's biggest urban center. They are called the "neo-rural" French. Downie wrote about his trekking experiences in Paris to the Pyrenees: A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James. Check out the interview here.

postwar America..."a culture of joblessness" for urban African Americans

A film and a jazz performance - both available via YouTube. And excerpts from two historical readings. These were the tools before the class today as we sat down to learn more more about the hurdles of working class African Americans after World War II. To make the lesson more meaningful and to help the students see some of the things expected in their final papers, which are due on May 3, the class was split into two teams and asked to juxtaposed Thomas Sugrue's study on Detroit and Clarence Lang's research on St. Louis against the 1964 film "Nothing But a Man," which is partly set in 1960s Birmingham, Alabama. The goal: Write a thesis statement for a paper that analyzes the movie against the readings, which reveal the structural and social impact of failed New Deal initiatives on postwar African Americans. They were given the option to focus on one of the readings if it helped them to sharpen the ideas before them. To further push their thinking, the students were also asked to consider the life of jazz singer-actress Abbey Lincoln who stars in the movie. Lincoln's real-life political views and her early 1960s performances demonstrate, among other things, how black artists were aware of the postwar challenges facing African Americans  (Ivan Dixon, who stars opposite Lincoln in the film, was also a Civil Rights activist). While the theses revealed room for improvement (for example, the students failed to engage Abbey Lincoln's black freedom politics, something they have the option of exploring by next Monday for extra credit), I was pretty impressed with the results given how much they had to review and digest before writing in a two and a half hour class.  The thesis for Group A (Roosevelt, Aaron, Alexis and Lauria) went as follows: "Detroit's postwar urban crisis emerged as the consequence of two  important interrelated and unresolved problems in American history: 1)[the ways in which] capitalism generates economic inequality [and] 2) the ways in which African Americans ...[bear] disproportionately the impact [of this] inequality."

The thesis for Group B (Tiffany, Christin, Raven, Shariyah and Shanece): "Set in Jim Crow South during the postwar era, "Nothing But a Man" unveils the marginalization of blacks. Like the [Thomas] Sugrue and [Clarence] Lang readings, it demonstrates how behavior and values of poor or 'working class' [African Americans] manifest in a culture of joblessness...It does so in the following ways: 1) status ([Duff (Ivan Dixon), the protagonist] is a railroad worker; 2) social[ly] (He refuses to abide by Jim Crow laws, which leads to his joblessness [and] 3) mental[ly] (His inability to keep a job because of his attitude and behavior affect his marriage and self worth." To  read and hear what the students read and heard, click the links and clips above. Pay close attention to the lyrics in Lincoln's performance of "Driva Man" and consider them while watching "Nothing But a Man." The entire movie is available on YouTube.

Powerpoint used in today's class

the "fields of nowhere"

It was a bit risky using a Janet Jackson video as a way to emphasize how Southern culture permeates the public imagination. The idea was to make connections between this and Kimberley Phillips' own emphasis on how African American migrants from Alabama took the South with them when they headed to Cleveland in search of a better life after the First World War. There,  led by courageous African American men, and especially women, they established a working class vision of freedom. The Future Outlook League (FOL), a labor and community group founded by John Holly, a  man, from Tuscaloosa, eventually had more 10,000 members across the state. With the Great Depression and a second World War as a backdrop , both local whites and the black elite were troubled by the seeming backward, expressive "Southern" ways of Holly and the FOL. This organization was a force most could not ignore between 1935 and 1952.  Holly, among other things, urged black Clevelanders to not shop where they could not work. Their determination led to jobs in the service and transportation sector for many African Americans. Their success poses tensions with the early organizing efforts of white and blacks, some in biracial unions, in Bessemer and Birmingham during the late-19th and early-20th century. Interestingly, that which local whites and the black middle class feared in Cleveland - Southern expression - remains a key way that many, artists included, hone in on the richness in American culture. To this point, the students picked up on some of this culture in Janet Jackson's "Someone to Call My Lover" video. Aaron noticed the "rural landscape" and "pond baptism" at the start of the video. Also attentive to landscape, Roosevelt observed how Jackson danced in a jook joint "in...[the] fields of nowhere." Shanece was also struck by the baptism scene, but also by the children jumping on a mattress outside, revealing the poverty, but also the joy and sense of community in black Southern life. Kalynn detected New Orleans in the video, perhaps because of the musicians, but also because of the appearance of a pet alligator, which brought to mind swamp life. Alexis honed in on the jook joint's refrigerator, which seemed to indicate one way dancing bodies could "cool down" in the South's often sizzling  climate. Tiffany also saw community in the dancing bodies, something she felt was in "align[ment] with the generational movement discussed in the Phillips reading." Finally, Lauria focused, among other things, on the priest in the baptism scene. In him she observed, as did Phillips, how the South "puts a lot of emphasis on religion." Perhaps because half the class is from Alabama, most were aware that Jackson's mother, Katherine, hails from Barbour County, Alabama, which is in the southeast quadrant of the state where Creek Indians once lived. Next Monday, we turn to Thomas Sugrue's study of Detroit to better understand how black bodies in cities became less associated with jobs and more associated with racialized poverty after World War II.