A “New” Great Migration?

In what ways does the Migration Series reflect the broader social and political context of the time, and how do those themes remain relevant?

SO: There are a lot of push-and-pull factors that define the Great Migration. Black people were being exploited by their white employers, there was violence and lynchings in their communities. The series also illustrates the floods that contributed to the migration.

And now we’re experiencing a reverse migration. Black folks are leaving cities for some of the same reasons, now that housing is a major issue. And I think, also, it speaks to how we’re constantly pushed around. People often talk about who has the right to live in a city. And now we’re being pushed out of those places. We came here for opportunity, but then we ended up being subjected to substandard housing and racist policing. We can look back and see how we stewarded and developed many neighborhoods in the North, and now that the land is worth something, we’re being pushed out.

JL: Sola, you laid out the contemporaneous factors of the era: violence, exploitation, lack of access to educational opportunities and social mobility. And I think one of the reasons why this series is still so potent and still draws people to it is that these very same forces are at play today. Black folks and other communities of color are still under the heel of these forces in ways that have so many dire material consequences.

I think about the panel that talks about the floods that pushed people out, the ecological catastrophe. And today, in just the US alone, we’re dealing with the drying Colorado River and the drought in the Southwest. We’re dealing with the saltwater moving up the Mississippi River that is determining whether folks in Louisiana will have clean drinking water.

Then there’s the panel about child labor and the lack of education. And we can point to so many recent instances of journalists and investigative reporters documenting how young, particularly migrant, Latinx children have been found harmed or dead inside and on the grounds of industrial factories and plants.

The housing crisis is forcing so many folks out of a secure and stable home. And so, I think the brilliance of Lawrence is that he understood what that migration moment meant for Black people. But this work can also echo experiences that folks who are not just Black are having as the consequences of globalization impact us all in such a profound way.

Can you speak about how the Migration Series serves as a historical document, and how this type of approach can inform future archival practices?

JL: These vignettes are a perfect example of what it means to take art seriously as a tool for narrative making and memory work. For so many of us, regardless of the mediums we work in, or even if we don’t have a studio practice at all, this work is a reminder that the arts have an important role in how we document, record, articulate, and share a history. It makes me think about Isabel Wilkerson’s book The Warmth of Other Suns, which is a perfect companion to the Migration Series. Lawrence never overworks the material. You can be aesthetically experimental and still have your political commitments articulated through the work.

Lawrence said, “To me, migration means movement. There’s conflict and struggle, but out of the struggle came a kind of power, even beauty.” Can you talk about how the series challenges narratives about displacement? And how does it provide a counter-narrative that emphasizes the agency of the migrants themselves?

JL: Lawrence’s work is honest about the violence of the day, which many folks try to pretend did not exist. This series is honest about the ways in which Black folks rallied together and said, “Okay. We’re gonna scrape together these dollars to get you on a train to Milwaukee or Chicago or St. Louis.” It is a very detailed account of how we’ve always had to save and take care of ourselves.

And it shows you the beauty of how Black people have existed in this country, that we are in fact really connected. I have family members who moved to New York from rural Virginia to make a different life, but they were not ever disconnected from their origins and roots. I think that it’s very easy to be dishonest about the lives that Black people have had to make for ourselves. But Lawrence really says to folks who encountered the works, “Look at what we’ve had to deal with and still look at what we’ve made in spite of that.”

SO: Like you said, Jessica, this series is a very honest account of what happened. But at the same time, some people chose to stay and had their reasons for staying. There were Black professionals, for example, who had a stake in staying. Their clientele was in their town, and they were able to survive and make an honest living.

JL: You bring up Black professionals, Sola, which makes me think how wonderful it is that Lawrence highlighted the role of the Black press as an institution providing a counternarrative to the stories that white supremacy attempts to tell us about ourselves. The panel about the Black press is really striking to me because it demonstrates how so many people were invested in and committed to our safety, both in the South and the North.

SO: And I do think that speaks to our agency. A community helping its members learn where it was safe to go.