Journal Entry for Headed North
Narratively, I wanted to set up the Reverend headed North so I can provide a proper epilogue for my next move. As such, I thought it would be appropriate to dwell on ‘The Great Northern Migration” that moved many African Americans from the rural south to northern urban centers. Reading James Smethurst’s chapter “The Black City: The Early Jim Crow Migration Narrative and the New Territory of Race”, I found that the migration was actually more focused on urban centers in general instead of the typical geographic narrative. Smethurst notes that the mythos of the “Northern” aspect of migration may have been drawn more from the lack of explicit Jim Crow laws in northern states and the typical slavery narrative of achieving freedom via a northern oriented trek.
As well, I wanted to incorporate some of Geneva Cobb Moore and Andrew Billingsley “Antiblack Aesthetics: Jessie Fauset, Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jim Crow America” and their observation of the variation between Harlem Reinassance literature’s use of aesthetics in the face of Jim Crow notions. An interesting note is how the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson rendered the Jim Crow aesthetic as an ultimate binary of colored or uncolored (white). The use of Plessy’s “one-eight African” ethnicity to classify him as a “colored” implies the notion of minority identity as a mixing of any color into the standard white absence. This aesthetic played a role in the Harlem Reinassance in their frequent use of multi-color in their narratives (consider Helga’s love of color in her dresses).