The Rise of Mobile Street

This event, which is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Gulf South, features the 2017 Baird Research Fellow, Eve Wade. Wade, a native of Chicago, is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Southern Mississippi. The public lecture is a segment of Wade’s dissertation “Becoming Bronzeville: The Origin of
the Black Metropolis in a Southern City,” which explores broad questions about African American migration and urbanization.

The lecture explores the development of the African American community in Hattiesburg and what she argues could be the First Great Migration. From 1880 to 1920, thousands of African Americans left the rural South and settled in nearby Southern cities, creating “Black Metropolises.” The lecture looks at how this segregation forced the creation of bustling business and entertainment districts where residents lived decades before migrating North in what is commonly known as the Great Migration.

“We are delighted to have Eve join us at the museum and listen to the unique information she has about the settlement of African Americans in Hattiesburg. We expect this lecture to be very interesting,” Latoya Norman, general manager of the AAMHM, said.