Inspiration from the Great Migration
成人视频professor Preston Smith spoke to the Washington Post about the Great Migration, when millions of Black Americans left the sharecropping South for economic opportunity in the North.
Between 1910 and 1970, about six million Black Americans left the sharecropping South for better economic opportunities in the industrialized North. In a piece for the , travel writer Sheeka Sanahori retraced her family鈥檚 trek northward during what has become known as the Great Migration, and as she set out, she spoke to Mount Holyoke鈥檚 Preston Smith.
Researching family history can be tricky, but Smith suggested starting with the older generation.
鈥淭alk to the elders,鈥 said Smith, chair of politics at Mount Holyoke. 鈥淚f they didn鈥檛 migrate, then their parents did.鈥
Becoming familiar with the ancestral journey from the American South is a key part of understanding one鈥檚 origins, he continued.
鈥淢any of us lament that we don鈥檛 know our ancestors from the continent, and it鈥檚 clearly a problem. But we do know our ancestors from the South. They survived a lot of hardship, making that trip and also settling.鈥
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