"'No Such Thing as Stand Still': Migration and Geopolitics in African American History"

"'No Such Thing as Stand Still': Migration and Geopolitics in African American History"

Kendra T. Field details the story of one family involved in a Chief Alfred Charles Sam's lesser-known Back-to-Africa movement in the early 20th century to claim that Marcus Garvey's larger movement and the Great Migration in general were rooted in the increasing ability of Black Americans to travel and migrate. Field further explains that Oklahoma was an early post-emancipation destination for freemen due to the United States' federal government's largely uninvolved presence in the territory that had originally been set aside for displaced Native Americans and less presence of discrimination.

Field's article offers insight to matters of migration, mobility, and race. She examines the case of "Chief Sam," for example, who drew people into his movement back to Africa by promising developable land to black Oklahomans who had their land removed from them when the state was formed. This movement mirrored the migration of white European settlers to the Americas in search of land and subsequent prosperity. . Sam also used the idea of Moses to motivate people to join him, alluding to the movement of enslaved Jews from Egypt to a land that was ordained for their prosperity. This movement to long for the homeland also manifested as the desire to create a new homeland in America on Indian Territory and relocate in their effort to establish their freedom and their peoplehood. Throughout the piece, Kendra T. Field describes how the longing of freed Black Americans for a territory to manifest their freedom on led to the migration of groups to various lands and the establishment of movements that perhaps exploited this feeling.

Kendra T. Field, "'No Such Thing as Stand Still': Migration and Geopolitics in African American History," Journal of American History (December 2015): 693-718.