Join us at the Library for “Beyond Black Radicalism,” a free talk by historian Janira Teague, a Virginia Humanities HBCU Scholars Fellow. More than two-thirds of Black residents in early 20th-century New York City were either African American southerners who came north during the early years of America’s Great Migration or Caribbean colonists—mostly emigrants from Jamaica or Barbados—who composed the first significant voluntary wave of Black immigration to post-emancipation America. This group embraced new opportunities and created new trends. Many of the newcomers were Virginia natives, hoping to take advantage of new opportunities in the urban north. This talk places America’s Great Migration in global context and examines the movement’s impact on electoral politics.
Teague, an assistant professor of history at Morehouse College in Atlanta and formerly at Norfolk State University, is a scholar of 19th- and 20th-century African American history. The Virginia Historically Black Colleges and Universities Scholars Fellowship is a program of Virginia Humanities.
