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.