Here, we spotlight essays that detail the historical and contemporaneous experiences of black people living in the region.
For me, living so close to the Ohio River evokes mixed feelings. The river trail that I like to walk along near my apartment is scenic, yet long stretches of it are flanked by the railroad, warehouses and industrial sites on either side. At home, I drink water from a filtered pitcher because of years of elevated lead levels in Pittsburgh’s water... |
Although African Americans have been minorities for the entirety of their history in the Lower Midwest, their presence and experiences in this space brought forth some of the most critical debates, conversations, and issues that gripped the nation in the nineteenth century. |
Black & Midwestern: On the Mississippi and Sites of Memory
Vanessa Taylor Within this imagined landscape of white blue-collar life, there’s the dismissal of Black people that shaped Midwestern cultures. Cities with rich Black culture and history, like Chicago and St. Louis, get pushed into their own class. But if there’s something unique and differentiating about white people from the Midwest versus white people from the Coasts, then why isn’t there recognition for the complexities of Blackness? |
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The Ghosts of 808 East Lewis Street
Tanisha C. Ford In February 2016, three young men were murdered in a house in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sixty years ago, in that same house, my grandfather shot and killed my grandmother, then himself. How can one address hold so much history—and so much tragedy? |
[...] people can be totally cool for years and years but suddenly decide that they need to be super racist because they want to hurt you. They'll say they're sorry, they'll explain how you misinterpreted what they said, but the fact is, they reach for racism because they think it'll emotionally and psychologically destroy you, and that's what they want to do at that moment. |
Coming From Where I'm From...
Tenicka Boyd Every time I returned to Milwaukee, I was forced to be 15 again. I was forced to remember people I had long forgotten about. I was forced to remember restaurants I could never afford to eat in. I was forced to remember neighbors who had long gone to prison. I was forced to remember the playground I was beat up at... |
I am a black woman born and raised in the space between the coasts and above the Mason-Dixon line. I am a face of the heartland, but you might not know it if you’ve been following the Trump-era reporting and commentary about the lives and political choices of people in the Midwest. |
Because in the metal community, especially out in the Midwest, the racism is a little different. People are not afraid to be vocal when they see something they don’t like. So we would walk into a show out there and a big bearded dude might say, “There’s a black person in here! I can’t believe it! What are you doing here?” |
I started having conversations with my remaining friends and family in the city about how this multigenerational, deeply ingrained identity of Pittsburgh was ever going to change if no Black people stayed in the city. Two months later, I made the decision to move back to Pittsburgh with no job and to dedicate my career to changing that identity [...] |
After my first year, I started to embrace my Blackness, and there was a massive backlash. Whenever I tried to speak out both in my classes and when I wrote for the DI, I was met with hate mail and bigotry. |
Because we are the most northern of the north, especially in the many fucked up ways the state views and acts on issues of race, and not just in asserting that second amendment rights were only meant for white people [...] |
Before you dismiss Peoria rappers as having little to rap about, consider that nearly half of the city’s black residents live below the poverty line and that Peoria’s violent crime rate is the fourth highest in Illinois. |
I don’t want to say we’re stagnant. But being set in your ways, I guess, doesn’t always make for fruitful conversation. Especially here in Detroit. Each time I go out as a black male, I always have to prepare myself for the following [...] |
But while Richard Pryor might seem an inordinate point of departure for me, a churchgirl-turned-college professor, it is in his brazen commentary and his obscene, autobiographical, profanity-laden stage routines that I have found something of a life I know — something that the conventions of academia can sometimes gesture toward but that, for me, have only been fully embodied in the place and the people I know of as home [...] |
Black girlhood is summer. It arrives quick and dies just as fast. Suddenly we are young women, even if we don’t feel it, even if we know intrinsically there is life left to live [...] |