The Great Migration in New York
The story of the Great Migration is the story of America. Between 1916-1970, 6 million African Americans moved from the rural South to the urban centers in the Northeast, Midwest, and West in search of jobs and other opportunities for better lives. This mass movement had a profound effect on nearly every aspect of modern American culture.
While we’ve been reading Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration as our February Preservation Book Club pick, we wanted to dive into the topic of the Great Migration and its effect on New York. On Tuesday, February 23, we welcomed historians Dr. Carla DuBose-Simons and Dr. Jennifer Lemak and members of the Rapp Road Historical Association Beverly Bardequez and Stephanie Woodard to share their expertise. Dr. Carla J. DuBose-Simons, Professor at SUNY Westchester Community College, focused on New York City. Dr. Jennifer Lemak, Chief Curator of History at The New York State Museum, talked about a few specific Upstate communities. Beverly Bardequez and Stephanie Woodard joined to talk about their experience living in and advocating on behalf of Rapp Road, a Great Migration community in Albany. Rapp Road was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002 and the League included the community on our 2016-2017 Seven to Save list of endangered historic sites. Beverly, Stephanie, and other dedicated grassroots activists in the community have done incredible work promoting and preserving the history of Rapp Road.
It was a lively discussion shining a light on an important part of our history. If you missed it live, you can watch the webinar recording below — and we hope you do!
THIS EVENT WAS PART OF THE LEAGUE’S FUTURE OF PRESERVATION WEBINAR SERIES. THANK YOU TO OUR PROGRAM SPONSORS, THE PEGGY N. & ROGER G. GERRY CHARITABLE TRUST.
Beverly Bardequez pictured next to the historic marker at Rapp Road, which was installed in 2017.
Beverly Bardequez is the President of Rapp Road Historical Association (RRHA). She took up the mantle leading the organization in 2010, following in the footsteps of her aunt Emma Woodard Dickson. Rapp Road was established in 1927 and remains an intact historic district. RRHA works hard to share its history and story of living in the Albany Pine Bush. Beverly has deep family ties to Rapp Road and grew up there until the age of four, returning to the neighborhood later in life. Beverly worked at the Capital Director Educational Opportunity Center of Hudson Valley Community College for 22 years, until her retirement in 2010.
Carla J DuBose-Simons earned her doctorate in American History from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in February, 2013. Her dissertation entitled The ‘Silent Arrival’: The second wave of the Great Migration and its affects on black New York, 1940-1950 examines the demographic, economic, and social effects of the World War II migration of southern blacks to New York City. The dissertation maps areas of black settlement in the city, explains the process by which blacks found employment, analyzes early civil rights activism in the city, and explores the expansion of black settlement beyond the boundaries of Harlem.
Her research interests include New York City history, African American history, and the history of community formation. She is the author of “Fighting Against Jim Crow Hiring” in The Economic Civil Rights Movement: African Americans and the Struggle for Economic Power which was published by Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group in 2013. Prof. DuBose-Simons’ latest article on black settlement in the South Bronx “Movin’ on Up: African Americans in the South Bronx in the 1940s” was published in the Fall 2014 issue of the New York State Historical Association’s quarterly journal New York History.
Dr. DuBose-Simons is an Instructor of History in the Humanities Department at Westchester Community College where she teaches colonial American, 20th Century American, and African-American history classes. She also serves as Assistant Editor of the Ethnic Students Review, University of California Press https://online.ucpress.edu/esr
Jennifer Lemak is the chief curator of history at the New York State Museum. Prior to this appointment she served there as senior historian/curator of social history. Major exhibition and publication projects include Votes for Women: Celebrating New York’s Suffrage Centennial (2017) and An Irrepressible Conflict: The Empire State in the Civil War (2012). Lemak is the author of Southern Life, Northern City: The History of Albany’s Rapp Road (SUNY Press, 2008) and several articles on the Great Migration to Upstate New York. Her current projects include research on the ERA in New York State and an upcoming exhibit on the 50th anniversary of the Attica prison uprising.
Lemak serves the history field as a member of the New York State Preservation Board, the New York State Suffrage Centennial Commission, and as co-editor of the New York History journal. She earned her MA in Public History and PhD in American History, both from the University at Albany. She is also a fellow of the New York Academy of Historians.
Stephanie Woodard is the Senior Policy Analysist at the New York State Council on Children and Family Services (CCF). Prior to working at CCF, she has work for 30 years in state government managing fiscals for New York State’s Human Services programs that support the children and families of New York.
She is third generation of the grant-migration in which her grand-parents migrated from Shubuta, Mississippi to Albany, New York. Stephanie is a member of the Rapp Road Historical Associations Board in which she helps guides the Association’s mission which is to preserve the Rapp Road Historical District.