My adventure into Africnn American History and race issues in our country began in 1974 when I was a student teacher at Willingboro Junior/Senior High School. It was the first time I had either looked at the issues, or spent long periods of time in a mixed racial population. Despite having grown up in Philadelphia, I'd had very little interactions with people of a different race growing up. Even at my high school, in Merchantville, New Jersey, though integrated, the races never interacted, or if they did, I never saw it. Whites students had their own 'hang-out' which was Aunt Jeans, a soda shop on the corner of the main street and a block from our school. I don't remember every sharing a class with the Afro/Am students, or interacting with them in any social way. I never knew even one of them.
There was a geographical aspect to our Afro/Am students that I never grasped until I took a job working as a "Suitcase" history interpreter for the Camden County Historical Society in Camden.
For the few short years that I visited schools interpreting Colonial Life in the autumn and the Underground Railroad in the Spring, I immersed myself in literature about the Underground Railroad and discovered and visited many of the small towns and little outposts that were stops on the long and dangerous journey from slavery to freedom in the north.
Then I realized that the small enclave of shabby row homes and clapboard single houses in my high school town was a model that stretched from Othello and Greenwich on the Maurice River and the Delaware Bay, on up through South Jersey as far as I got, Bordertown and Burlington. These small communities formed around farm labor and around escaped and freed Afro/Am people who worked for the "Big houses" as cooks, housekeepers, launderers, gardeners and babysitters. It seems as though every small white town in New Jersey has a nearby Afro/Am. village just like Saddlertown next door to Haddon Township. Sometimes they have their own names, sometimes they are just neighborhoods people know about but don't identify geographically, as where I grew up in South Philadelphia. There were streets we (free ranging white youth) didn't go down and neighborhoods we stayed out of, in bigger cities, there were and are 'Projects' -low income housing developments predominantly housing AFro/Am descendants of the great migration from the south to the north throughout the first half of the 20th century.
When I was a student teacher at Willingboro, I taught a course in Minority Literature (yes - I taught it - my mentor disappeared as soon as she gathered that I had some competence, which gave me great freedom undersigning and teaching the classes. My college education at the beginning of the revolution meant that we had not yet gotten around to courses in Women's Literature or Minority Literature at college, and therefore we read no works by authors in either group. I had to educate myself in both of these areas and I threw myself into it with passion.
It was a mind expanding experience to see for the first time, the view of our society from the perspective of farm laborers, agricultural workers union groups with leaders such as Cesar Chavez, or to see the world through the eyes of the great Civil Rights leaders of our time such as Malcolm X. I coupled all my research into African American History with Women's Studies.
Also, throughout my life, having been the daughter of a serious Union man, one who held jobs for the union thought his working life, on top of his work in structural steel, I had been inspired to learn more about the labor movement.
Therefore, from my earliest days, I have enthusiastically pursued the balancing of my understanding of the world with exposure to the viewpoints of other segments of society. I have studied the civil rights movement of disabled people, religious minorities, and ideology and history of groups that spring up around humanistic principles such as the Environmental Movement, and the Animal Rights Movement. Once I become interested in a subject, it stays with me for life, and so, even though I don't work anymore or do part-time or volunteer work in the history field, I still keep learning.
Currently, I have been immersed in African American contemporary topics. On Netflix, I watched a truly shocking and eye opening documentary called THIRTEENTH about the mass incarceration of Afro/Am men as a profit making new industry following emancipation and segregation. Simultaneously, I watched an immensely rich and entreatingly series called TREME' about the attempts on the part of citizens of New Orleans, to put their lives back together and save their cultural traditions in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina and the destruction of the sister suburb of New Orleans called the TREME' or the 9th District. Previously, I enjoyed the uplifting and inspiring book by Michele Obama called BECOMING. It was made into a film, and I watched that as well.
Just now, we are fortunate to have a few successful AFroAm filmmakers such as Ava DuVernay* and Spike Lee, to give us glimpses into the lives of people and places that are unfamiliar and inaccessible to us. I have seen all of Spike Lee's films over the years. Soon I will watch his latest Da 5 Bloods. In my bedroom/library, I have a shelf of Black History books, the most recent of which was an Isabelle Allendes novel about a slave woman in the Caribbean who flees with her family to New Orleans after the Revolution in Dominica. Also wherever possible, in my history volunteering days, I read the Afro/Am literature within my field, so I just read a history of the Black Regiment of Rhode Island that fought during the Revolutionary War and was present at the Battle of Red Bank, my most recent volunteering experience.
In the Sunday New York Times there was a column in the AT HOME section, on page 7, on books that offered context to our current historical moment:
ROLL JORDAN ROLL: THE WORLD THE SLAVES MADE THE HSTORY OF WHITE PEOPLE
RECONSTRUCTION, THE UNFINISHED REVOLUTION
THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS: THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICAN'S GREAT MIGRATION
BLACK WOMEN, RAPE, AND RESISTANCE
LOCKING UP OUR OWN, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT IN BLACK AMERICA
So if you are looking for a good book to read to help you understand the times in which we live, I hope this helps you find a start. For a heartwarming read, I strongly recommend BECOMING. The book was much better than the documentary although the documentary helps fill out the personalities of the characters and shows a slight transition from Michelle Obama's years as First Lady, to her return to private life which I found interesting. I cannot recommend TREME' enough. It is one of my new list of top 5 tv series. It is in the top 3 along with Mrs. America (hulu), High Maintenance (HBO), Treme' (amazon prime).
Of course, back in the day, I read most of there great Afro/Am writers such as Zora Neal Hurston, Tony Morrison, Maya Angelou, Baldwin, and Wright. But it is always good to REFRESH and RENEW and update your knowledge base, so happy researching!
Also, I think some other tv series that help expand understanding were also award winners and are in m top ten such as THE WIRE. And for movies, the most recent was HIDDEN FIGURES, about the AfroAm women mathematicians who worked for the Manhattan Project. And before I sign off, I want to add that the Camden County Historical Society has made great progress in opening up Camden History and Afro/Am History in its exhibits and its programs.
*The films of Ava Duvernay are a great place to start if you are just getting into it: Selma, 13th, When They See Us, Queen Sugar, Middle of Nowhere, Cherish the Day.
Happy Trails!
Jo Ann
wrightj45@yahoo.com
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