For the past few weeks, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time researching the roots of African migration in New York City focusing on the colonial period in New York until the Harlem Renaissance. I have had the privilege to use the resources provided by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. This center, unlike other organizations, is very much centered on collecting documents and resources of the history of the diaspora in the U.S. and abroad. The Schomburg has proved essential in my research in terms of having access to a large scale of resources in crafting a narrative on African immigration. The Schomburg has a variety of concentrations, focusing in on a multitude of issues related to the African diaspora, making my research on African migration not as clear-cut. Multiple perspectives and resources exist, leaving me an individual actor, to sift through the sources and narrow them into one comprehensive story on this history of migration.
Beyond the Schomburg, most other organizations related to African immigration are more focused on advocacy than they are on research. However, I believe that both advocacy and research can work hand in hand on the organizational level. Beyond African Communities Together, there are two other well-known African immigrant-based organizations serving the New York City community: Sauti Yetu and African Services Committee (ASC). Sauti Yetu is a grassroots organization mobilizing “low income or ‘no income’ African immigrant women to improve the quality of their lives, strengthen their families and develop their communities in the United States.” This organization works with low-income African immigrant women and families with issues related to employment, immigration status and other racial and economic challenges. Alongside Sauti Yetu’s work on behalf of African immigrant communities is the African Services Committee, “a multi-service human rights agency based in Harlem and dedicated to assisting immigrants, refugees and asylees from across the African Diaspora.” They address issues related to war, persecution, poverty and global health. Although these organizations are not intentionally conducting historical research, they are indirectly doing so through their advocacy efforts. Their work illustrates to the broader public what the recent migrant experience can be like–the struggles, challenges, and barriers people face migrating and settling into urban centers like New York City. Through their services and programs, the outsider can begin to piece the histories of these members by inspecting the issues these organizations choose to focus on. For instance, through ASC’s work with African refugees, as historical researchers, we can begin to analyze the motivations and intentions of migrants in their pursuits of immigrating to America.
Given that the history of the recent wave of immigrants is still so new, my biggest resource in the coming weeks might, in fact, involve interacting with these organizations and their bases. The Schomburg, as an organization, is in some ways bounded by the availability of written records and resources such that some of the recent histories of African migration may slip past its repository. Nonetheless, advocacy-based organizations like Sauti Yetu and ASC can play vital roles in bridging that gap.
One way in which the bounds of both the research and advocacy based organizations can be ruptured is through collaboration. I believe that through the resources available at the Schomburg, many of these organizations can take on their own history-making projects. This would allow the organizations to go beyond their day to day advocacy to create something that their members can look to in the future and can actually help to advance their advocacy efforts by establishing their histories and presence. On the other hand, in collaborating with these organizations, the Schomburg, can move beyond the realm of historical research that is mostly rooted in academia, to something that is more communal in nature.
As you know, I’m very interested in the ways we can mobilize historical research for present-day advocacy projects, which, in many ways, is why you are undertaking the work you are during your fellowship. But I also think a lot of advocacy organizations find historical research to be frivolous or, as the kids say, “extra” rather than immediately useful. But I firmly believe it can be. Historians have a hard time explaining their relevance in everyday terms. As a newly-minted historian, how would *you* do it? What kinds of outcomes can you envision coming from your research — and not just what we’ve already proposed, but, rather, in line with what seems right to you given your personal experience and what you’ve started to uncover?