Over the summer, Sharony Green, an assistant professor of history, asked her students to come up with a song that they thought described moving through space. What would they listen to on a road trip if they wanted to put everything that hurt them in their rear view? What would they play for someone their great grandparents’ age in the same situation?
The goal was to have her students help create a playlist that will be used as the backdrop to Green’s digital art installation, “Mississippi and Miami,” showing on Monday night. The exhibit focuses on the stories of African-American migrants after World War II and how they claimed power through their migration, specifically migrants who moved to south Florida, like Green’s own family.
“They were sharecroppers, so they used to follow the crops so when tomatoes were ready to be picked in Florida they would go down there just like migrants who would go anywhere,” Green said. “My mother had asthma and my grandparents realized her health was better in Florida. They sent for my mom and my aunt and then my great grandmother came too. In order to improve their lives they had to move.”
To give the students in her class a better idea of what she wanted, titled “Bebop to Hip Hop: Young America and Music,” Green shared her family story during their first class along with a picture of her grandmother. She then asked them to make connections between her grandmother’s story and their own stories.
“That’s what this whole thing is about – looking at collective pain and individual pain and that way they can hopefully put some of themselves into it and also have some interest, at least historically, if only for a couple hours, if only for a semester, in the lives of other people,” Green said. “I think music is a great way to have the this conversation, because it’s very hard to meet someone who doesn’t like music. It doesn’t matter what your favorite genre is, you’re listening to something.”
Green said when she first saw the playlist, which includes Train, Lana del Rey, Beyonce and Queen, she was blown away.
“It’s so eclectic,” she said. “I got energized in a way scholars get energized about their own research because I’m not doing it in a vacuum. I’m actually sharing it with my students and I don’t know if any of them are going to go on to be history majors or not- it doesn’t really matter. I think we’re all historians and if we can sort of make ties between the present and the past, that’s a good thing.”
The exhibit at the Dinah Washington Cultural Center is a part of Green’s ongoing research including over 400 hours of interviews. While not all her interviewees agreed to let their voices be heard publicly, Green hopes to use their stories to create a book within the next several years.
Visitors at the exhibit will hear the students’ playlists, see videos including faces of migrants and hear the audio interviews across four screens.
“We all are part of this universal story involving people who move through space with some resulting change in their life,” Green said. “I think you’d have to look very hard to find someone who isn’t familiar with that narrative or doesn’t have someone in their family who can tell them a story about some ancestor who had that experience.”
Anthony Lipscomb, a junior majoring in interdisciplinary studies in Green’s class, said he was originally confused by his professor’s request over the summer, but once he heard her story, his song selection changed.
“The first day of class, she shows us the pictures from her project and she tells us the stories behind them,” Lipscomb said. “How black migrants went from Alabama to Florida like her grandparents did and telling about why they moved. So the songs that we came up with are supposed to tell why we moved through space and it’s such a cool concept to have your class participate in a project that they really don’t know about until you explain it.”
Lipscomb had originally picked a song from the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” but after the first class session changed his mind and picked “That Power” by Childish Gambino, which he said was a more personal choice for him.
Lipscomb said he hopes that visitors will take away a new appreciation for the great migrations of history from the exhibit, and that maybe, like him, people will see similarities to their own family’s stories.
“I really just want them to see that the black community, as a black person here at UA, that we’re everywhere and we’re always going to have each others’ backs, and we’ll always have a certain story that we will possess,” he said. “My story might be a little different from yours but we are all going through the same thing. So maybe if someone can see from the perspective of someone that’s 70 or 80 and hearing their story and then contrasting and comparing it with your story, you know that we’re all living the same story, it’s just happening at different times.”
Lipscomb is currently in the process of creating a Spotify playlist of songs that he hopes will provide insight into his classmates’ influences and inspirations.
“Music can convey more than just getting hyped for a party,” he said. “It can convey feelings through decades and eras and that’s something that Professor Green has strived to show.”
“Mississippi and Miami: A digital art installation” will be on display Aug. 29 from 6 – 7:30 p.m. at the Dinah Washington Cultural Arts Center.
