Monday August 3, 2015 - Marcia Chatelain: History Through the Eyes of Black Girls

How important is Gender, Place and Race to who we become?

Dr. Marcia Chatelain, author of South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration, discusses the construction of Black girlhood in Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century, and what it tells us about the intersections of race and gender.  In August 2014, Chatelain encouraged educators to talk about the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri via the Twitter hashtag #FERGUSONSYLLABUS. She also talks about how Black Lives Matter is rewriting 2016 and why it’s important that so many of its leaders are women.

Listen now or Get MP3. 30:45 min.

"This is a moment of great pain and of great mourning but boy is this a moment of deep optimism and hope because we are seeing things that we have never seen before."

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"In South Side Girls Marcia Chatelain recasts Chicago's Great Migration through the lens of black girls. Focusing on the years between 1910 and 1940, when Chicago's black population quintupled, Chatelain describes how Chicago's black social scientists, urban reformers, journalists and activists formulated a vulnerable image of urban black girlhood that needed protecting. She argues that the construction and meaning of black girlhood shifted in response to major economic, social, and cultural changes and crises, and that it reflected parents' and community leaders' anxieties about urbanization and its meaning for racial progress. Girls shouldered much of the burden of black aspiration, as adults often scrutinized their choices and behavior, and their well-being symbolized the community's moral health. Yet these adults were not alone in thinking about the Great Migration, as girls expressed their views as well. Referencing girls' letters and interviews, Chatelain uses their powerful stories of hope, anticipation and disappointment to highlight their feelings and thoughts, and in so doing, she helps restore the experiences of an understudied population to the Great Migration's complex narrative."

Click here to listen to entire show. 59:50 min.

Also on today's show:

Interview with Allison Green