Black History Month: What Is Liberty To African Americans?
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Black History Month. Founded by pioneering historian Dr. Carter G. Woodson, February is a time of celebration and remembrance of Black life.
Woodson was born in Virginia to formerly enslaved parents and later moved to West Virginia to assist his family and attain better educational opportunities. His quest for education took him to Kentucky, Illinois, Massachusetts, and later to Washington, D.C. Woodson’s geographic biography echoes that of so many Black people. Black lives in America have been marked by movement.
The Middle Passage is one of the most consequential geographic movements in the history of Black people. By the time these ships arrived on colonial shores, the destinies of these people were out of their control. From the depots that dotted the Mid-Atlantic and the southeast, Black people found themselves in the Carolinas, New York, Georgia, and all parts in between. If there was a demand for the knowledge, skill, and labor of African people, that is where they were shipped, but these were not decisions Black people made for themselves.
The dislocation of Black people from themselves and their own choices was one of the most insidious parts of enslavement and later Jim Crow. When and where Black people did anything was largely at the discretion of Whites.
Hence, migration became one of the first ways for Black people to mount opposition to their oppression. In the absence of formal mechanisms for relief, Black people voted with their feet and their hands. Literally, by any means necessary, Black people used their bodies to liberate themselves. Whether through artistic endeavors, acts of rebellion, or maroonage, Blacks people used movement as a way to find freedom, however fleeting.
In many cases, Black efforts to exercise bodily autonomy placed them in harm’s way. Therefore, for many Black people, the ability to go where they wanted, when they wanted, and on their own dime became a measure of their liberation. To move was not simply to amble about and find oneself, a la Kerouac. Rather, moving was a strategy for liberation and one of the primary ways they could maintain their freedom.
Moving also had another imperative: to create community and the conditions for being fully and levelly human. This is why Black towns and institutions became one of the earliest expressions of Black independence. Separation was not the aim; it was the byproduct of the majority white social organization. But Black people were more than happy to take advantage of the freedom that separation afforded. Whether it was debating whether to stay in the United States or flee to Canada, the Caribbean, or the continent of Africa, Black people were deeply engaged in conversations about moving for opportunity.
While we tend to think of migration as leaving one’s country, the Great Migration from the South to points East, West, and North is part of this tradition. This mass departure of Black people fundamentally altered the political environments of their new homes, but it was also an opportunity for Black people to redefine themselves on their own terms. Exodusters, for example, took a leap of faith in the nineteenth century to move to Kansas and other parts west in search of the opportunity to become property owners and create self-sustaining communities. Black folks left Kentucky for Ohio to provide more opportunities for their children and families back home. Some even left for Liberia and Sierra Leone in an attempt to find the freedom DeTocqueville and the Framers waxed so poetic about, but the evidence of which had never been seen or experienced by Black people in the United States.
Movement, however, was about more than the act. It was about the journey toward full personhood. It was about realizing that, to have the full measure of humanity, Black people needed space. The space to (re)connect, to debate, to organize, to repair, to build, to own, to mourn. The need for the agency that movement represents was essential for any sincere effort to be made at Black community.
This spirit is with us in the present as a “New Great Migration” of Black people returning to the South for a better quality of life. The Freedom Georgia Initiative operates in the same vein as the late activist Floyd B. McKissick and his vision for Soul City, North Carolina, and seeks to create new possibilities for building Black communities. Similarly, Black expatriate communities thrive in Costa Rica, Ghana, Mexico, Portugal, and South Africa.
This type of self-liberation is not new. It is one of Black people’s legacies of resistance. To be able to own oneself and be able to determine when, where, and how they will engage is not a result of liberation but a precondition for liberation. Black people have never waited for the “right” time to secure the freedom that is rightfully theirs. They have used every means and open door to get what they needed to expand the limits of what their lives could be. These moves were often slow and not immediately successful. But these migrations offered a chance and a choice. Failure, as Frederick Douglass reminds us, was not what Black people feared–it was the denial of their autonomy and the dignity of knowing they were responsible for their fates.
Freedom is something that Black people have had to claim with their bodies. It was not in the Emancipation Proclamation, not in the Constitution, not even in the Civil Rights Amendments. Freedom is an act that Black people have committed to making real for themselves since they were brought to this country. Freedom is less a state of being than an act that requires near-constant vigilance. Black people know this all too well, as recent history and contemporary actions seek to deny Black people full citizenship. Again, we see Black people organizing–moving– because they will yield neither an inch nor a mile of their freedom.
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Harvard and White America’s Creepy Obsession with Hoarding Black Remains
