July 16-27, 2012

Dear Colleagues,

I invite you to submit an application to participate in the summer institute, “Stories of the Great Migration”, for K-12 teachers.  Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, hosted by the African American Studies Program and held at the University of South Carolina (USC) in Columbia, SC from July 16th to 27th, 2012, this institute will offer an engaging summer institute on the historical dimensions and significance of the African American Great Migration for 30 school teachers.

This institute will delve deep into themes associated with the Great Migration, including music, art, literature, food ways, drama, and history. USC faculty, visiting faculty and teachers will explore three historical themes: (1) Push and Pull: Jim Crow and the Lure of the North; (2) Far from Canaan: Struggles in the “Promised Land”; and (3) Urban Harvest: American Culture Transformed.  Each theme will be explored in depth through literature, art, music, and oral history allowing teachers the opportunity to improve their use of these disciplines in their own teaching.  The institute thereby encourages innovative teaching strategies and the use of interdisciplinary methodologies to develop effective teaching and learning practices.   “Stories of the Great Migration” will introduce teachers to primary sources that are, by their very nature, visceral and emotional.  A learning environment will be created that encourages a free flow of information – both giving and receiving – among teachers and university instructors.

The movement of African Americans from the rural South to urban areas became significant during the 1890’s.  However, movement was not always directly from southern agricultural fields to northern cities. The major shift in the African American population up to 1910 was from the rural to the urban South.  Then, from 1910 to 1920, more than 500,000 African Americans left the South altogether, with the largest numbers migrating in a three-year span, 1916 to 1919.

Whether the North was the Promised Land the migrants sought is debatable.  Nonetheless, the numbers of migrants increased over time, with 1.3 million African Americans leaving the South between 1920 and 1930.  They drove; they hitched rides; they saved till they could buy a train ticket. They went to Chicago, Detroit, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, DC, as well as smaller cities. They fled Jim Crow laws enacted after Reconstruction, including laws that established separate street cars, separate Bibles in courthouses, separate window sections in post offices, and separate library branches.

Fortunately, this demographic upheaval is vividly documented through literature, music, paintings, and first-hand accounts.  In the nineteen-thirties, about 100,000 people who had once been slaves were still alive.  The Federal Writers Project collected 2,000 of these life stories:  first-hand accounts of slavery and its aftermath that would otherwise be unrecoverable.  Similarly, journalist Isabel Wilkerson realized that the generation of Americans who lived under Jim Crow will not be around much longer, so gathered stories of the Great Migration from 1,200 people.  Isabel Wilkerson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of the Great Migration will be the keynote speaker and a lecturer at the summer institute.

By the nineteen-seventies, after the civil rights movement put an end to Jim Crow and when the Great Migration finally stopped, more than six million Southern African Americans had left their homes.  The migration was larger than the Gold Rush and larger than the departure of Oakies from the Dust Bowl.  Before the migration, 90% of all African-Americans lived in the South; after the migration, 47% lived outside the South.

USC and visiting instructors will provide engaging and hands-on instruction throughout your two-week stay.   The program director, Valinda W. Littlefield and program coordinator, Deloris Pringle, will attend daily, providing continuity for the entire institute. In addition to working with stellar USC faculty participants and Isabel Wilkerson mentioned above, “Stories of the Great Migration”, will also allow teachers an opportunity to work with Gerald Early, one of the country’s most important scholars on Jazz and American music; Jessica B. Harris, a renowned culinary historian; and, Suzanne Wright, Director of Education at the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., who was responsible for the design and publication of the Jacob Lawrence Migration Series Teaching Kit.

The African American Studies Program (AFAM) provides undergraduate majors and minors with the interdisciplinary tools and resources to study the experiences of people of African descent and to evaluate black historical, cultural, social, economic and political developments in South Carolina, the South, the United States, and beyond. A bachelor's degree in African American Studies from USC provides excellent preparation for graduate studies, professional degrees in law and journalism, and careers in education, politics, health care delivery and administration, social work, tourism, business, non-profit management, and more.

Our principle strengths include black political and social movements, African-American literature, and comparative cultural anthropology. We regularly offer coursework that focuses on South Carolina's black communities, particularly in the Civil Rights era and black women's history, and Sea Islands' literature and language. Each year, the program sponsors an annual Robert Smalls Lecture Series and honors students for academic excellence in African American Studies with the Grace Jordan McFadden Award. We also work in cooperation with the Institute for African American Research through research seminars and conferences.

Faculty and Affiliates provide support to K-12 teachers locally as well as nationally.  For example, the Director, Valinda W. Littlefield, has worked with K-12 teachers in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Illinois for the past 28 years.  She serves on the SC State Department of Education Social Studies’ Standards Committee and is the Higher Education Representative for the South Carolina Council for the Social Studies and the South Carolina Council for African American Studies.