Opportunity, Migration, and the Black Family

from the
THE HARVARD COLLEGE
UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROGRAMS NEWSLETTER
April 1998

Among them is Sarah Russell, a junior from St. Paul, MN. With help from Prof. Cornel West and the Harvard College Research Program, she has launched an innovative project using that mainstay of southern life-the family reunion-to explore how African Americans experienced the migration.

Sarah will use her findings in her senior thesis, where she plans to address how families in the urban South have responded to changes in economic opportunity since the Civil Rights Movement. "To document migration is to tell of personal responses to changing social, economic, and political opportunity," she says. Sarah's interest in urban life stems in large part from her work at a low-income housing community center in inner-city Minneapolis. "I was exposed to dimensions of urban poverty that challenged my previous ideas about what it meant to be poor, to be on welfare, and to be a kid growing up in the city," she explains.

When Sarah arrived at Harvard, she knew she wanted to explore this "urban landscape," as she puts it. She just wasn't sure how. "I found that cultural, political, economic, and historical approaches were equally important and interesting to me," she says.

Sarah soon found the perfect department: Afro-American Studies. "Af-Am provides so much freedom to get into all of these areas of study," she says. "It is very supportive of students 'wading' through topics in the early stages of their undergraduate careers."

Last year, Sarah's "wading" led her through courses on African American cultural expression and race, class, and poverty in urban America. "One class introduced me to the cultural significance of migration," Sarah says. "Another, taught by William Julius Wilson, really hammered home the significance of migration on the making and crystallization of the urban ghetto."

Sarah also began her relationship with Prof. West last year. "I took his introductory course, which is so inspiring," she says. "I always figured he would be a great resource once I really had something to ask about. This year, I signed up for his office hours to talk about something quite vague-'the South'-and it led to these great conversations about how historians have approached the South and its culture, history, and meaning."

The two assembled a bibliography that linked interpretations of southern history and culture to the migration experience. Sarah was especially interested in how migration fused southern identity and the northern urban experience of blacks. "I am interested in the ways in which individuals carried with them the images of the South-its music, art, and letters-as they built new lives," she explains.

Sarah soon settled on the family reunion as the lens she would use to examine black migration. "Reunions offer more than just an opportunity to study family migration patterns at a microsocial level," she says. "The setting captures the rituals and memories that are central in bringing together those who have left the South with others who have stayed. My larger study of how families interpret changing economic opportunity will thus take place in a context that in itself is a reflection of southern identity and the migration experience."

Sarah and Prof. West drew up an ambitious research plan, and she received support from the Harvard College Research Program this spring to carry it out. To start, Sarah will review primary and secondary accounts of blacks who migrated north from the 1950s to the 1970s. She plans to spend hours in Harvard's libraries, and will travel to the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a major archive of African American life. "The Schomburg Center holds critical primary sources and family histories of migration," Sarah says. Prof. West has arranged for her to meet with the director of the Center during her visit.

This summer, Sarah heads south to conduct field work in Alabama and Georgia. Her base of operations will be in Atlanta, where she will work out of the offices of the Southern Regional Council. "The SRC runs a number of programs concerned with the growth and development of the South," explains Sarah, "and deals with issues such as fair representation and educational opportunity."

"I let them know that I was doing a project on economic opportunity in the urban South, and they agreed to give me a home for the summer," she continues. "I think that means I'll have a phone, a desk and use of their archives. I am very excited about working with the Council, as they have expertise on pretty much every dimension of my thesis project."

Sarah will also work at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, with its excellent archives and education departments. Because of a fortuitous encounter, her work at the Institute should be especially productive. "I was having a conversation with Jennie LaMonte, a Harvard grad student," Sarah recalls. "At some point, I mentioned that I had visited the BCRI and thought it was a terrific place, and she told me that her dad is on the board of directors there! I wrote him a letter and through him, I've established contact with great resources at the Institute and in the city."

Perhaps the most exciting aspect of Sarah's summer research will be the work she does at actual family reunions. She is already making plans to attend a number of them. "I've learned of reunions with the help of both the SRC and the BCRI, which has family groups touring its museum throughout the summer," Sarah says. "I have also made contacts through internet searches. I actually found a magazine called Reunions on the web!"

The reunions will give her an invaluable opportunity to conduct interviews with those who went north, and those who stayed behind. In addition, Sarah will experience a kind of history that libraries and archives simply can't provide. "At reunions," Sarah says, "families are actively documenting their own history through ritual, memory, and tradition."

--John Marchetti