Description
Within histories of Black life across the Chicago Metropolitan Area, Black suburban settlements are overlooked due to Great Migration (1915-1970) narratives that do not account for the range of places that Black people live across their city-region. Geographers, historians, and urban sociologists exploring a Black sense of place - how Black people understand their spatial position - examine how colonial violence, histories of inequality, and the racialization of space structure the geographies of Black life. Black people countering these processes through placemaking and their spatial imaginaries, shaping how they produce places affirming Black life, have also been examined. Less attention has been paid to the geographic specificity of Black placemaking and to the spatial imaginaries of Black people that shape a Black sense of place. In this talk, I explore Black suburban placemaking and the spatial imaginaries of Black migrants in Robbins during the post-Reconstruction era (1877-1915). Located in Chicago Southland, a suburban subregion of Chicagoland with a rich history of Black life, Robbins is the first northern municipality governed by Black people, home of the first Black-owned airport in the United States, and was a safe village for interracial couples. I center Robbins to examine the placemaking practices and spatial imaginaries of Black Midwest Exodusters who developed Black suburban settlements due to the failures of Reconstruction and the desire to move to places that were unmade. In doing so, I (re)historicize Black suburban life to broaden our understanding of a Black sense of place across Chicagoland.
Speaker
Dr. april l. graham-jackson is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and a Research Fellow with Chicago Studies, the Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization, and the Urban Theory Lab at the University of Chicago. She is also a Research Fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies and a Long-Term Fellow with the Newberry Library. A loud and proud third-generation Black Chicagolander, geographer, and geosonicologist, april’s research and public humanities work explores the geography of Blackness and Black life across the Chicago Metropolitan Area known colloquially as Chicagoland. She is interested in how Black Chicagolanders shape Chicagoland and how they are shaped by it.
Dr. graham-jackson earned her PhD in Geography from the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Mount Holyoke College as the first person with a bachelor’s degree in Black Geographies. Dr. graham-jackson is also a proud community college graduate. She holds an associate’s degree in general studies with honors from Harold Washington College, City Colleges of Chicago.
About Colloquium
Colloquium is a weekly series of talks featuring staff, fellows, and scholars who are working with the library’s vast collections. These events bring together experts from various fields to share their research on a wide range of topics, followed by an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and engage in conversation.
Colloquium is open to the public and offers a chance to explore fascinating ideas and new discoveries. No advance registration is required.