African-American Migration Experience Project

In early February, I was reading through the Yahoo News Most Popular articles when one caught my eye. It was an article about the In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience project sponsored by Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. When I was at UCSC in college, I got accepted to a summer honors research program at University of Delaware. The article happened to be one of the areas of expertise of one of the two professors who sponsored and ran the program, Dr. Carole Marks. I checked out the contributors page and saw her name. Plus both sides of my family were part of the Southern migration from Georgia to industrial Cleveland in the early 1900s.

The Great Migration, 1916 to 1930

So I got in touch with her to say hello. She pointed me to the University of Delaware's a wonderful African American art Paul R. Jones collection. In addition to sociology, she teaches courses in art and the African American experience as well as other courses.

Carole got me in touch with the other professor who organized the honors program, Dr. Margaret L. Andersen, also known as Maggie. Both of them have been working on the Jone project. Separately, Maggie has been very productive writing books, etc. The cool thing is that she collaborated with professors who were guest speakers during our program.

Check out their books on Amazon:

• Carole Marks (a sampling)
  Farewell--We're Good and Gone & The Power of Pride
  


• Margaret Andersen
  

If It Wasn't for Us

I've been watching the Martin Scorsese The Blues this week on PBS. Just as the reviews said, the different movies are uneven. There's one night left but I've already decided which one's I like. The best ones are Feel Like Going Home by Martin Scorsese, The Road to Memphis by Richard Pearce and Warming by the Devil's Fire by Charles Burnett. These are the episodes that stayed most on point. Educating us about the life and times of the Bluesmen who hit their prime and second peaks from the 1900s through the early 70s. The last episode, Piano Blues by Clint Eastwood, will probably be good too.

The Great Blues Migration

The episode that got on my nerves was Red, White & Blues by Mike Figgis. They should have called it "If It Wasn't for Us" . It was basically an hour and a half of British guys congratulating themselves for discovering American Blues and bringing it back across the pond to the ignorant white kids who didn't know what a treasure they had. I agree with the last part, but it was very annoying for them to keep saying the first part. The English guys kept harping on the theme that they were saviors of all the Bluesmen who would wouldn't have reached such a wide audience without their intervention. The worst part is when they kept playing a clip of BB King saying his gratitude for the British guys contribution to his success. The clip itself wasn't bad. The fact that they played it at least 3 times in in less than 2 hours that was annoying.

Overall, the best thing to come out of the series will be the complimentary CDs. The money grubbing related to the merchangdising has already started. I tried to buy Martin Scorsese "The Blues" full 19-disc set on eBay. It would have been awesome, the CDs has almost EVERYBODY you'd ever want from Son House, Howlin Wolf, Bessie Smith to current folks like Shemekia Copeland and Beck. Unfortunately, I had to stop bidding after the price got over $125.