Canceled: MAKING AFRICAN AMERICA: Immigration and the Changing Dynamics of Blackness
Canceled: MAKING AFRICAN AMERICA: Immigration and the Changing Dynamics of Blackness
Making African America: Immigration and the Changing Dynamics of Blackness will explore the experiences of immigrants of African descent and their children, their interactions and relationships with native-born African Americans, and the ways these interactions have remade blackness historically--and with repercussions shaping the African American experience to the present day. This project is motivated by the understanding that black immigrants, from the Caribbean migrations of the late 19th and early 20th century to the Caribbean, Latin American and African immigrations since 1965, have exercised a profound influence on the making of African America, yet one that has not received sufficient scholarly attention.
That African diasporas have long shaped the United States, from the forced migrations of slaves onward, is well known. Yet there is a great need to connect African American history to the history of black immigration. While African American historians have tended to neglect the history of voluntary immigration during the last 150 years, immigration historians have neglected the black diaspora while focusing on European immigrants. Even today, when immigration historians have forcefully turned their attention to Asian and Latino immigrants, African diasporas receive insufficient attention. There is also relatively little scholarship connecting and comparing early late 19th and early twentieth century immigration of Afro-Caribbeans to the post-1965 movements of a much broader African diaspora from Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. This conference will make all these connections and comparisons. It will explore such themes as transnational ties to homeland countries, expressions of the immigrant experience through literature and the changing geography of blackness over time.
The conference will combine academic panels at the University of Maryland with community-focused events at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.