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The Midwest Has Meaning for More Than Just Whites
There is a rich history of Blacks in Middle America that too often gets overlooked
On June 16, 2018, the New York Times published an op-ed by Indianapolis-based writer Tamara Winfrey-Harris titled “Stop Pretending Black Midwesterners Don’t Exist.” It became the inspiration for this package.
I myself am not a Midwesterner, though I do have relatives in that area, as many of us do. But like Winfrey-Harris, I too have had enough. Since 2016, our nation has been bombarded with profiles upon profiles of the Midwest that have been paradoxically both informative and narrow. The region itself has been the site for political fascination, most recently due to the rise of Donald Trump to the presidency. While it is true that Trump’s victories in the Midwest were crucial to him defeating Hillary Clinton, that is not the whole story. That is never the whole story. As Winfrey-Harris writes in her op-ed, “It is a bitter irony, then, that many of the arguments about Mr. Trump’s appeal to Midwesterners make sense only if you pretend Black people don’t exist in the middle of the country.”
They do exist — abundantly and vibrantly.
Many African Americans either live or have a relative who has lived in places such as Detroit and Chicago or Cincinnati and South Bend. During the Great Migration, due to racial terrorism and limited professional and social mobility, many of our people left the South and traveled to the aforementioned places in search of economic opportunity. We filled factories all across the heartland of America and infused that area with soul. The names and contributions from the Black Midwest are long stretching — from Langston Hughes to Aretha Franklin, from Black Wall Street to Motown Records. Those who planted their feet may have stayed there for generations upon generations.
With this package, you will now hear from those descendants. Author L.L. McKinney writes of the misconceptions and magic of being a proud Black Kansan, and Tara L. Conley pays homage to the Black mothers of the Rust Belt region of Ohio who knitted together its social fabric. Wendy S. Walters reports on the growing influence of Black women voters in Detroit, and Syreeta L. McFadden discusses the frustration turned galvanization of Black Milwaukeeans into the political region. Though such a package cannot be fully comprehensive, what we intend is that our ZORA readers, both familiar and new, will be inspired and informed about the pulse of Black Midwesterners — in spite of mainstream neglect.
