cori tucker-price.
migration as methodology
cohort. 2023-24
project. Migration as Methodology: Digital Mapping and Black Religion in the American West
location. Los Angeles, CA
medium. exhibit
Shades of L.A.: African American Community. “First AME Youth.” The Los Angeles Public Library Photo Collection. Photograph of some participants in a youth league event outside of the First A.M.E. Church, located at 8th Street and Towne Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, 1918.
In 1921, Chandler Owen, a Socialist writer and editor from North Carolina, embarked on a trip to the west to increase circulation of the Messenger publication, then based in New York City. He chronicled this trip for readers, noting how to avoid discrimination on the railways, but also highlighting what one might experience as the train dashed at “incredible speed over the plains, across the mountains, thru tunnels-on, on to the great Western portals.”[2] Over the course of the twentieth century, African Americans departed the South in search of new possibilities where they could live freely. Known as the Great Migration, this exodus began in 1910 as thousands of migrants left the American South and relocated to northern and midwestern cities like Chicago, Philadelphia and New York. They also moved West. One of the “great Western portals,” that received Black migrants was Los Angeles. During World War II, the city experienced an influx of migrants who relocated for a variety of reasons. As the state of California was infused with $11 billion in war contracts, the need for labor in war manufacturing industries was acute.
One of the Black religious institutions in the city that welcomed migrants was People’s Independent Church of Christ (PIC). Formed in 1915, the church became known in the city for an emphasis on incorporating “democratic ideals” into its religious orientation. This orientation focused on crafting church members who were active in politics and focused on building a religious institution that would be of, by, and for the people in the community. The church’s second pastor, Reverend Clayton Russell, was a homegrown talent and a bulwark for civil rights on the radio, in the pulpit and on the streets. In 1938, under Rev. Russell’s direction, the church began collecting detailed membership rolls which documented the biographical information of every new migrant who joined. From 1938-1946, the church collected the names, addresses, and former church homes of each new member. Eight years of data resulted in over five hundred pages of migrants’ biographical information, which roughly equates to a sampling size of 3,053 individuals. The geographic diversity represented in the dataset reveals that World War II Black western migration patterns were complex and not unidirectional.
In “Migration as Methodology: Digital Mapping and Black Religion in the American West,” the digital map conveys a small aggregate sample size of the numerous routes that led Black people to Los Angeles. In what follows, you will see and experience “religion on the move.” Unlike physical belongings, migrants’ religious backgrounds were readily accessible, as they wrote down their previous affiliations in the membership rolls. The beliefs, value systems and ritual practices that governed migrants’ religious identity could be transplanted in new places but were equally transformed by the force of the migration experience. The membership rolls reveal that the migration experience was not only a religious event. It was also a significant political and cultural event that reshaped the Black community in Los Angeles and led to new imaginings of Black cultural expression. This digital resource attends to the important role of religious diversification within community building. Of the small sample size, it is evident that the church was comprised of parishioners from diverse religious backgrounds ranging from Baptists, Pentecostals and Catholics to Converts. This digital source provides context to better understand the ordinary people who made the extraordinary decision to leave their homes to build a new life in a new city.
Some of the people you will encounter on the map will only have their name and previous religious affiliation listed. Others, like Mabel Scott, a famous music artist, will have copious amounts of information with pictures and media. Recovering information on Black migrants through digital archaeology methods can often mean that there are gaps in what is possible to find about someone’s life. People are unable to be located as historical subjects for numerous reasons, from a misspelled name in the Census to someone’s social status as a domestic worker, Black migrants and their contributions remain elusive because of historical methods that privilege written sources. In particular, Black women and their contributions are difficult to locate. While women have overwhelmingly contributed to the organizational development of religious institutions, the texture of their stories and experiences is often silenced by an archive that catalogs the contributions of men in leadership positions. "Migration as Methodology" serves as a corrective, revealing the spatial reality that Black women, men, and children traversed, and the power of digital mapping as a methodology to overcome the historical absence of Black presence.
notes.
[1] Chandler Owen was a writer, editor and a member of the Socialist Party. In 1917, Owen and A. Philip Randolph started a journal called The Messenger, backed by the Socialist Party of America, which featured the work of political and literary writers. In 1921, Owen and a colleague went on a western tour to “increase the circulation of The Messenger, organize councils for the Friends of Negro Freedom, present the philosophy of the New Negro and to present the Negro problem to organized labor.” Owen described his trip to the West and the obstacles he encountered on such a long journey. For his readers, he offered instructions on how to circumvent discrimination on the railways, but he also implied that any discomfort he faced was worth it once he arrived at the “Golden Gates.” Chandler Owen. “From Coast to Coast.” The Messenger, May 1922. p. 407-410.
[2] Ibid.
cite this project.
Projects featured on this site are the intellectual property of the Fellows who created them and may not be reproduced without their permission.
Please cite the creator if you use their work in support of your own.
Citation: Tucker-Price, Cori. “Migration as Methodology: Digital Mapping and Black Religion in the American West." SPIRIT HOUSE: A Crossroads Project. July 2024. Date Accessed. https://www.crossroads-spirithouse.org/tucker-price.
Cori Tucker-Price is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Society of Fellows of the Humanities at the University of Southern California. Her research and teaching focus on African American history, religion and the American West, religion and media, and migration studies. Her current book project traces the historical and social forces that shaped the practices of African American religious institutions in Southern California. Dr. Tucker-Price is a Public Fellow in Religion and the American West at the New York Historical Society as well as a Mellon Applied History Fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work has been supported by the Lived Religion in a Digital Age project at Saint Louis University, the Forum for Theological Exploration (FTE), the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Foundation (FDR), and the Harvard Horizons Scholar program. Prior to her appointment at USC, she was the Guarini Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellow in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration in the U.S. Context at Dartmouth College.