On April 13, 2022, Deborah D. Douglas presented “Forth and Back: The Great Migration Roadmap to Resistance and Reclamation” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
Douglas is author of the new Moon guidebook U.S. Civil Rights Trail: A Traveler’s Guide to the People, Places, and Events that Made the Movement. “The U.S. Civil Rights Trail follows the twists and turns of a momentous era in our country’s history,” said Douglas. “The movement of the 1950s and ’60s is just a part of a long through line that continues to this day.”
Douglas begins the trail in Charleston—the main port of entry for many enslaved Africans—winding through southern cities and towns that saw marches, boycotts, and Freedom Rides. Before connecting to the endpoint of Washington, D.C., the trail highlights Jackson, Canton, and the Mississippi Delta.
“For many Black people, Mississippi is home—and that’s true for those who live there as well as Great Migration families throughout the Black diaspora who still feel a soul connection to the state,” said Douglas.
Deborah Douglas was born in Chicago and reared in Detroit and Memphis. She earned her BS in journalism from Northwestern University and her MA in grants, management, and evaluation from Concordia University. She has been a lecturer at Northwestern University and was the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor at DePauw University 2018-21. Douglas is co-editor in chief of The Emancipator, and was the founding managing editor of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. She is a contributing writer to The New York Times bestseller Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019, edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain.
This program is co-sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council. History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson.
