Personal Narrative: My Family's Migration To The Big Apple

“Times of transition are strenuous, but I love them. They are an opportunity to purge, rethink priorities, and be intentional about new habits. We can make our new normal any way we want”. -Kristin Armstrong. When I heard this quote it reminds me of a specific time in my life when I moved to another country. There are a couple of events that helped me become who I am now.

Trotter, Joe William Jr., ed. The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. A collection of essays examining the role of black social networks in spurring the exodus from the South.

Many people move around to different states throughout their life, and I have had the opportunity to live in what feels like two different worlds. I have spent most of my life in Bradenton, Florida, but at the age of ten I moved to the small town of Cleveland in the north east Georgia mountains. The two towns are completely different in my opinion and only someone who has lived there would completely understand what I mean when I say two different worlds. The weather, the people, and the different opportunities are just a few of the differences between the two towns.

I was 16 years old when i moved to Cleveland. I had moved from California, a place that everyone thinks of as a area of movie making, opportunities, rich people with fancy lamborghinis and ferraris, well it's nothing like that where i come from. Compton california, the place that you can see 14 year old gang members with guns, get shot just for wearing the wrong color, or just walking down the street like my mom. I never really meet my dad he got locked up when i was 3 on an assault charge so i had to move in with my grandparents in Cleveland.

I interviewed a beautiful and courageous woman, of African descent. Born and raised in Monrovia, Liberia on May 20, 1969. In addition, she has one biological brother and three step siblings. Currently she resides in Loganville, Georgia, where she lives with her two children. By the same token, she and her husband been married for twenty-one years to her loving high school sweetheart husband. Due to unfortunate circumstances, she lost her husband in the line of duty. Causing her to become a widow, continuing to survive life without her husband. When I conducted this interview, had one topic in mind that I wanted to learn more about her life as an immigrant and how did influence her life.

New York metropolis, is the tale of the advent of African American urban society and way of life. Even though only one of the many examples of predominantly black neighborhoods in American towns, Harlem is unique in many approaches, most importantly due to the fact historically it has been perceived as the center of African American culture. Simultaneously, at precise ranges of its development, it had a reputation of a black ghetto with residing situations incomparably worse than the ones in different components of the metropolis.

Growing up in a small town near the border of Arizona, I had always displayed an interest in seeing the world–the different cities and sceneries. But at the same time, I felt at home in Arizona. I breathed for the desert air, the grinched-colored cacti, and the occasional roadrunners. Imagine my surprise when I found out, shortly after my parents split, I was moving to New York City.

In general, if I was African American sharecropper arriving in Chicago, I would have been surprised to see the number of sharecroppers from the South arriving in Chicago with me. During the Great Migration from 1916 to 1918, it was estimated about a half million African Americans moved from the Southern to Northern states and 30,000 arrived in Chicago for various reasons. In this assignment, I’ll discuss some things I would encounter (Mullane, 1993, p. 455).

For years immigrants have come from distant nations to start their lives over in America. People from all over the world leave their home countries in pursuit of something better, and many find themselves on Long island. My family was among many of the refugees who fled the Soviet Union in the 80s and early 90s. Coming to America for them was a whole new world where opportunities and possibilities were endless. My mother chose to come to Long Island because of all it had to offer as far as education and jobs. Being a very diverse residential area made it the ideal place to move to. Knowing minimal English and having little money, my mother struggled for many years to build a new life. She was able to get a job, become fluent in English, finish

In The Southern Diaspora, James N. Gregory tells the story of migration between the whites and blacks of the south. He focuses on how the whites and blacks moved from the south to the north. Gregory illustrates how two completely different races come together to uplift the American society. Not only does he illustrate the unity of blacks and whites, he also focuses on how the two races had to adapt to a new way of living. Gregory concentrates on how this particular migration recreated the social and political perspective of America.

My family moved from the Middle East to United States because of a number of reasons. The primary reason was the education infrastructure. The education infrastructure available in United States is perhaps the best in the world and this is probably what my parents thought when they moved into the country. The second was job because my father was working and he was provided a better opportunity to the work in this country, seeing the salary hike and other factors he decided it was in the best part of the family and all that we moved to the United States. Earlier, it was difficult because being from a different racial background presents you many challenges and you have to somehow manage those things. My family found it difficult at the start to communicate with others and make friends but slowly it all started to shape well. There were more and more people coming for

interviews of people who have or know people who have experienced historical events of the past. For this essay, I chose to take an oral history of the civil rights movement and the great migration. Preserving the memories of the individuals that lived during these historical events allows for many things in addressing the silence of African American experiences within U.S. History. First, memories and recollections taken from oral histories may differ from the perspectives of those who have appear on historical records or may be completely absent from any other documentations. Also, because cameras and video cameras were not as easily accessible as they are today, the majority of history is documented from peoples’ memories through letters, diaries, and oral history interviews. In addition, taking an oral history allows me to ask specific questions towards what I am are interested in documenting about the civil rights movement and the great migration. Lastly, oral histories are somewhat viewed as a “revisionist” to the study of both the civil rights movement and the great migration because it takes firsthand accounts of those participating on campaigns and protests and also of those were watching from afar and allows readers to understand each individual part of what made the movement as a whole.

Passed down from generation to generation, oral tradition predominates as one of the most significant sources in discovering the history of the African diaspora. Plagued by illiteracy, the tangible text of the past remain useless for both the freed man and slave, this heightens the use of spoken word to elicit the events of themselves and their ancestors. Through the American Folklore Center, the stories that George Johnson convey, take form. Interviewed in 1940, George Johnson, a former slave from Brierfield, Virginia, recalls the tales of his own enslavement as well as the stories he passed down from his father and grandfather. However, his strictly progressive rendition of his place in North American slavery not only question the accuracy

With the large scale exodus of African Americans from the south during the period (1916-1920), this report by U.S Department of Labor, Division of Negro Economics works to find the potential cause of this large scale exodus. Upon discussing this topic with an “educated, professional” black, they believe that a prominent reason good be the high wages in the north. Further research regarding the topic, bring them to the conclusion that search of adventure, high wages and better social standing are the prominent reasons for this exodus. I intend to use this excerpt to illustrate the distinguished reasons for great migrations, which was an influential reason for the large number of black population in Harlem, New York.

To put things in retrospect, Walley begins her ethnography with the story of her great-grandparents’ generation immigrating to the United States during the post-World War II era—America’s pinnacle for middle-class growth—to start a new life in Southeast Chicago. Walley illustrates the struggles of her Swedish family by introducing her immigrant great-grandfather’s memoir, Big Grandpa, an immigrant from Sweden. To exemplify his progress and hindrances, Walley incorporates anecdotes about childhood, pictures of her family, and conversations with her family. Although Walley’s family grappled with despair