Associate Professor of History and current Director of Africana Studies Thabiti Willis is embarking upon an ambitious new project that utilizes a transnational approach to explore racial geographies with a team of domestic and international collaborators. “Birmingham, the Johannesburg of the South: Visualizing Historical Geographies of Race and Demographic Change in the United States and South Africa” is a multi-year project that examines how race was articulated and demarcated in space, as well as the legacies of segregation and apartheid in Birmingham, Alabama and Johannesburg, South Africa.
In November 2019, Professor Willis brought his collaborators together at Carleton to discuss the opportunities and challenges of the project ahead of them in a Public Works-funded workshop. For a project of this scope, it would be impossible for an individual to do it all on their own. Luckily, Professor Willis is part of a strong team whose experiences complement one another. From the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Head Archivist Wayne Coleman brings extensive knowledge of the resources held by the Institute, a deep familiarity with Birmingham history, and connections with local cultural and historical institutions. Assistant Professor of History Pam King, University of Alabama-Birmingham, has spent her career working in historic preservation in Birmingham and has recently worked on the development of an archive of oral histories of four Birmingham neighborhoods. Professor King’s work has made her an expert in Birmingham’s neighborhoods and the changes they underwent in the second half of the twentieth century. From the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, Director of the Wits City Institute and Andrew W. Mellon Chair in Critical Architecture and Urbanism Noëleen Murray specializes in architecture and urban design during and after apartheid.
Why compare these two cities? Why Birmingham and Johannesburg? To begin with, people in both locations are already interested in comparing the cities. In Birmingham, comparisons to Johannesburg and South Africa inform parts of the city’s understanding of itself. In addition, the two cities have similar histories of development and heritage. Industry played a major role in the settlement and development of both cities and both were founded after the abolition of slavery in their respective systems (US and the British Empire). Today, histories of racism, segregation and apartheid, and the drive to overcome are at the center of both cities’ heritages. Despite these similarities, Birmingham and Johannesburg are in different countries and thus had and have different political, social, and economic contexts. Together, these strong parallels and essential differences make a comparison quite compelling.
Furthermore, comparing Birmingham and Johannesburg not only allows the project to examine their legacies of racial spatialization and struggle in new ways, but also exemplifies the transnational vision of Africana Studies at Carleton. In 2017, Carleton’s African and African American Studies program changed its name to Africana Studies, a change that was more than cosmetic. Africana Studies stresses the connectedness of African and African American Studies, and neither can be properly examined without recognizing the broader context. Thus, in the spirit of Africana Studies, Professor Willis explains how this project “offers [the] opportunity to reflect upon the unique local histories of both places, but also…[demonstrates] the importance of…putting places within the global African diaspora in conversation or in context with one another.” Moreover, Professor Willis emphasizes how the global and transnational focus of Africana Studies reflects the transnational dynamics of the civil rights and apartheid struggles, which contributed to their successes.
The project will explore the extent to which Birmingham and Johannesburg share similar histories of racial segregation and the ways that race was articulated and organized. In addition to race, the team will examine the role of religion, labor, and class in racial construction and the anti-racist struggles. While the collaboration is still in an early stage, possible products of the project include interactive maps, public databases, and museum exhibits. Although the sources available will differ between the sites, the main source base of the project will be oral histories and government planning documents. The Birmingham Civil Rights Institute has a collection of oral histories that Pam King and other members of the team hope to supplement. Planning to involve students in the project, Professor Willis sees the work with oral histories as one place for student work through research and internships.
While the project is not directly related to Professor Willis’s recent monograph on Yoruba masquerades or his current research on the African diaspora in the Middle East, it marks a return to his earlier work. As a graduate student, Professor Willis participated in two international faculty seminars in South Africa, on comparative social constructions of race and comparative studies of HIV/AIDS. While his research has moved in a different direction since then (north, primarily), the combination of this graduate work, his research on the construction of race, and his experience with historical mapping signal the ways in which this project is a continuation of Professor Willis’s scholarship, rather than a departure from it. Professor Willis and his team are currently working to get the project underway by identifying and applying for grants, planning their research, and exploring pedagogical opportunities.