An Interview with the Team Behind 'Great Migrations' from Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Great Migrations: A People on the Move premieres on WTTW and the PBS app Tuesday, January 28 at 8:00 pm.

Since the beginning of time, humans have moved from one place to another, seeking identity, community, and the opportunity for a better life. Migration is a particularly profound aspect of the African American experience because Black people were denied movement due to centuries of enslavement that robbed them of their humanity. After Emancipation, many African Americans headed north to Chicago. Why here? And did the city live up to its promise?

Great Migrations: A People on the Move, a new four-part series hosted by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., tells the story of African American movement over the 20th and 21st centuries. We spoke with series producer/directors Julia Marchesi and Nailah Ife Sims about what compelled migrants to leave behind everything they knew to gamble on the unknown, why they came to Chicago, and how this movement has shaped our nation.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

What made you want to tell this story?            

Julia Marchesi: The Great Migration was one of the most dramatic demographic transformations in U.S. history, and yet the story has not been fully told in documentary format. It is often referenced in other stories about the African American experience in the 20th century, including some of Dr. Gates’ other series, but the actual story of how the migration began, how word spread, where people headed, what happened when they got there, and how that movement changed the trajectory of American culture, society, and politics has not been fully explored.

Nailah Ife Sims: The personal transformative nature of migration is something I’ve come to know through my family histories on both sides; one with ancestors who've migrated from the South to Chicago, and the other from Haiti to the States. This series was a unique opportunity to contextualize and explore the meanings of those migrations within the larger history of our country, and the ongoing saga of Black America which began as a forced migration. It also feels timely to reflect on these histories, at a time when the term “migrant” is once again part of American discourse.

Most people familiar with American history have heard about the Great Migration, but it’s plural in the title of this series. Why is that?              

Marchesi and Sims: Migration has been a defining aspect of the African American experience and we wanted to underscore the fact that it did not occur just in those sixty years we define as the Great Migration. Black people were moving and striving to better their lives long before that, and still are doing that to this day. Migration never really ends – it just changes direction.

The mass movement north that trickled out in the 1960s actually began to reverse course and produced what we call in the series the “reverse migration” back to the American South. And then of course, we have Black immigration, also an ongoing and deeply significant aspect of the Black American experience. These more contemporary movements continue to re-define what it means to be an “African American.”

Chicago is an integral part of this story. How?             

Marchesi: Given its central location, Chicago became the easiest to get to, and the fact that it had both job opportunities and a thriving Black community made it one of the most appealing cities for migrants. It took on an almost mythic legend as the “promised land.” It was important to unpack why Chicago became a leading city of the Great Migration story.

Sims: You find dozens of references to it across Black culture, from Robert Johnson’s “Sweet Home Chicago” to Bessie Smith’s “Chicago Bound Blues” to Richard Wright’s Native Son, and more. It was also a known example of what migration could do for Black people in the early 20th century. By migrating north and growing robust communities, or Black Metropolises, such as Bronzeville in Chicago, they created a modicum of freedom and power for themselves that was not yet possible in the South.

Through his great-grandniece, we meet the legendary founder and publisher of The Chicago Defender, Robert Sengstacke Abbott. What role did he play in the mass influx of African American migrants to the city in the early 20th century?

Marchesi: Robert Abbott saw migration as a way for Black southerners to escape Jim Crow oppression and violence, as well as a way to punish white southerners who depended on Black workers. He probably also saw a way to increase his readership as well as to grow the Black community in Chicago. His role was to promote migration, especially after 1917, when he realized how transformative it could be.

Chicago as a land of opportunity attracted a number of Black luminaries to the city during the Great Migration. Can you share any of them?

Marchesi: Musicians, especially jazz musicians from places like New Orleans, were drawn to Chicago in the 1910s and ’20s. One of the most famous [featured in the series] was Louis Armstrong, who came north in 1918.

Is there a story in the series that especially resonated with you?

Marchesi and Sims: Learning the true story behind one of the most-used photographs tied to the Great Migration was revelatory for our whole team. Many of us have worked on series about African American history before, and to have the Arthur family photograph re-contextualized, to understand that this was a family fleeing terror, was a humbling experience. Archival photographs hold stories many of us cannot begin to guess.

What do you hope viewers will take away from the series?

Marchesi: I hope viewers will consider how complicated our country’s relationship has been with both migration and immigration. In this country, we tend to romanticize and celebrate migration and immigration stories only in retrospect. When it is happening, however, the mass movement of people can often be seen as a threatening and destabilizing thing.

Sims: I hope this series helps viewers understand how these brave migrations not only changed the course of their lives and futures, but have pushed American society and culture forward…they continue to, if only we pay attention.