- Up next on "American Black Journal," the filmmakers behind the PBS documentary, Great Migrations, talk about the impact of African-American movement in this country.

Plus, an annual Black History Month event is back for the ninth year.

We're gonna get details on the African-American Family Book Expo.

Stay where you are.

"American Black Journal" starts right now.

- [Narrator] From Delta faucets to BEHR paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

The four-part PBS documentary series, "Great Migrations, People on the Move," continues tonight at nine o'clock here on Detroit PBS.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the host, executive producer, and writer for the series, which focuses on how African-American movement during the 20th and 21st centuries helped shape this country.

Many Southerners migrated to Detroit, of course, through Michigan Central Station.

And I had a chance to moderate a panel discussion at Michigan Central with Dr. Gates and other guests during a screening of the documentary hosted by Ford.

Here's a portion of that conversation.

This is a quote from Jacob Lawrence, who was an African-American painter, a wonderful African-American painter, whose depiction of the Great Migration, in my opinion, is one of the most detailed and one of the most moving, and really was one of the most complete until I saw the series.

And he said, "If at times my productions "don't express the conventionally beautiful, "there's always an effort to express "the universal beauty of man's continuous struggle "to lift his social position and to add dimension "to his spiritual being."

There is something about this work that just makes that quote ring in my mind, this idea of not just lifting social position, but changing your spiritual being, lifting your spiritual being as well.

The migration changes all of us in America, in not just social ways, it expands our spiritual essence and existence.

You only have to spend a little time here in the city of Detroit to experience that.

So I would love to have Skip Gates talk about social and the spiritual change that comes as a result of the migration.

- That's one of the most beautiful comparisons that we could possibly get.

Jacob Lawrence's "Great Migration" series is composed of 40 panels, beautifully rendered in vibrant colors, showing just regular African-Americans coming out of the South and making it up to places like this great train station.

And he had the capacity, though it's in the visual arts, to suggest movement.

In each of those panels, you feel like people really are on the move, but they're not, they're just flat panels.

To understand how dramatic the impact of the "Great Migration" was, imagine six million people being in prison.

Six million people being in prison, and their grandparents were in prison, and their great-grandparents were, and their great-great-grandparents for 300 years.

And all of a sudden, they could rush free and come to the North.

And that's what happened.

And that's why all these brilliant cultural forums came out of that, the energy exuded from the feeling of freedom for the first time.

When you didn't have the Ku Klux Klan on your behind, you know, that you could be a man, you could be a woman, you could aspire, you could have hope, you could have aspiration, you could get a job, make it $5 a day.

Can't beat that.

- I wanna have the filmmakers also talk about the way you put something like this together, the narrative, the detail, and again, the capture of that spiritual change that happens as people come North.

Nayla, I'll start with you.

- You know, as you've heard Skip describe, we were tackling three major migrations over the span of over 100 years.

So this was a lot of history to tackle.

Julie and I, you know, tackled this challenge by trying to tell an arc of transformation and maturation over time.

We, you know, wanted to make sure that we were representing the many cities that people went to.

We honed in on some cities that represented phenomenons around transformation, whether it was economical, like here in Detroit.

You know, Chicago was known as the first promised land, you know, which, I mean, the promised land and the word Exodus, the words that were used were biblical, you know, so it was spiritual in nature.

You know, L.A. was, you know, the furthest people would travel.

And we, you know, wanted to make sure that we touched on that as well.

You know, I think we did our best to include the emotional side of things, the historical side of things, the everyday people, because this was a spiritual movement, or a social and spiritual movement, I should say.

It's not, you know, an organized movement in the civil rights movement.

It's six million individuals made this choice, everyday people who, you know, didn't know what the other side looked like.

- Talk more about picking the cities.

I mean, Detroit is an obvious, I think, choice for this, and the story here is so powerful, and it shapes so much of who we are now, that you couldn't leave it out.

But talk about the other cities that are in here, and why they're important as well.

- Yeah, I mean, in some ways, we picked the low-hanging fruit, because, you know, we didn't, there's only a limited amount of time.

I mean, we wish, there's so many stories we wish we could have told of different cities, but certainly Detroit, we had to tell.

Chicago, of course.

Chicago was the original promised land, and that was, you know, the Chicago Defender really promoted Chicago, and because of the train lines and the central location of Chicago, it just became the place that people wanted to go.

So I think Chicago, definitely.

New York, as Skip has mentioned, just Harlem as this cultural mecca was also such a huge draw, and just as a place of cultural expression, you just, you can't miss New York as being, and the Harlem Renaissance, the migration plays such an important role in the Harlem Renaissance, so that was important.

And then, again, as Nayla mentioned, Los Angeles, because I think people don't think about the West Coast when they think about the Great Migration, and we thought it was important to include, I mean, certainly the Pacific Northwest was also, you know, that was a story we could have told, but we told Los Angeles because that was such a key city, especially from, I think, in Louisiana and certain parts.

And one of the most interesting things I think we realized is the train lines dictated where people ended up, right?

So depending on what state you were from and the train line you had, that's where you went.

So yeah, so those were the cities we ended up focusing on for the Great Migration, and then when we talk about the Reverse Migration, that's the story of Atlanta.

So that's a different- - I wanna talk a little about that Reverse Migration, and I guess how that fits into the narrative of this social and spiritual growth or change.

What drives that in the way that the original Migration North drove people here?

What's the crossover there, Skip?

- Well, the Reverse Migration took place because jobs started disappearing from the Industrial North, moving to the South, right?

Because it was, labor was cheaper, and a lot of other cities started, inner cities started falling apart.

There were the riots, you know, it was all complicated.

White people moved out to the suburbs, the tax base fell apart in places like Detroit.

You all know this story.

Then there were three things that happened that made the South bearable for black people.

So the jobs were there, right?

There was a passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, followed by the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and then the affordability of air conditioning.

And when I say that, my students crack up.

But the South was unbearable.

You know, it was hot, it was humid like the Congo or someplace, right?

And people didn't wanna go back and live in that humid environment.

And the affordability of air conditioning changed, both in cars and in homes, changed the bearability of life in the South.

And all of that added up to the Reverse Migration.

- I think it's also about self-actualization, right?

You know, the knowing that this is a risk to leave my home, leave everything that I've ever known in both migrations, the one where the Southerners were moving to the North and really having this understanding that I can be my best self.

So understanding that human perspective, I think is first and foremost.

But the Reverse Migration is exactly the same.

It's an opportunity to go to places where there is another kind of promise, another kind of promise to be an entrepreneur or be a part of other industries that were growing at the time when our industries weren't as much.

And so I think that self-actualization really recognizes the humanity of both migrations for all people.

- I love that.

- And I would, I think that's very well put.

And to add to the human aspect of things and the spiritual aspects of things, the South has always been the ancestral home of black people.

It's where black identity was born in the U.S. when we were forced here.

And even during the Great Migration, people always felt connected to the South.

They would send their kids there during the summer.

You know, they still had relatives there that they were writing back to.

So there's an emotional aspect to the reverse migration.

Even if you're not moving back to the land where your family lived, black people had a stake in the South.

Black people have a stake in the South because of that history.

And I think people are feeling that ownership and a sense of spiritual, of a spiritual pull to move back and build it.

- One of the reasons it was fascinating for me to make this series is that my family wasn't part of the Great Migration.

My family, we could trace back my family tree.

You know, I do do other series on genealogy, right?

I'm the most, somebody said, you're the most DNA-tested black man in the history of the world.

So we could go back to three sets of my fourth great-grandparents who were free Negroes, as we would say, free people of color.

Two sets were freed by the American Revolution.

Third set on my gate side were freed in 1821.

And you know what they had in common?

They knew each other.

They lived in the same county in Western Virginia, now West Virginia, 30 miles from where I was born 200 years later.

So my family migrated 30 miles down the Potomac River.

(audience laughing) A very unusual black experience, and to be country too, you know.

And don't y'all call me country.

(audience laughing) - Robin, I wanna bring you into the conversation here.

Motown, of course, is a defining, I guess, result of migration into the city of Detroit, and it gets exported all over the world.

But there, you also have this kind of nexus of this Lawrence observation about social position and spiritual growth.

Motown is not just about music and money.

It is, there is that root to it that is about our spirit.

You can't hear the music and not feel something.

- I just wanna comment on, and I'll come back to your question, but comment on the significance of the migration and how it impacted my family.

'Cause my family had a slightly different reason for coming to Detroit from Oconee, Georgia.

It was because my great-grandfather, who's really Barry Gordy Jr., so the Barry Gordy Jr. who founded Motown is really Barry Gordy III.

But Barry Gordy Jr., my great-grandfather, was an entrepreneur.

And an entrepreneur in the South who was making money from timber.

He was a plasterer.

You talk about going back to Georgia, or to the South, being drawn to that space.

Our family has a church that's over 100 years old that my great-grandfather built that today, every September, we go back to visit.

So they came here because my great-grandfather had a check for $2,000 that it wasn't safe to cash in the South.

And so to get away from the Ku Klux Klan and the folks who were threatening his life because of the dollars that they knew he had, he had to get away and come to the North.

And he had a brother who lived in Detroit.

And that brother said, "Come here, "and I have a safe place for you to put your money."

So that's how they got here.

And so the Gordy spirit was always about self-actualization and self-empowerment through business ownership.

And so everything was about owning your own business, making your own money.

So then that leads to what you're talking about.

It was a spiritual journey for this family, and it was always about empowering.

So the music of Motown was about empowering.

The music spoke to the human condition and things that all people, black, white, could relate to.

But it was all connected to that journey.

- The ninth annual African-American Family Book Expo takes place on Saturday, February 22nd in Highland Park.

This Black History Month event is presented by Detroit Book City Bookstore.

And the goal is to promote literacy in Metro Detroit and to highlight books by African-American authors.

Here to give us all the details is Janice Haynes.

She's the owner of Detroit Book City, along with one of the event's featured authors, Kelly Duran-Jones.

Welcome both of you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- To "American Black Journal."

It's been a long time, right?

- It's been a couple years, yes, absolutely.

- So you first did this in 2017.

- 2017.

- This is the ninth year.

- This is the ninth year.

- That's a pivotal year, right?

You're getting into that decade space.

Let's talk about this event and why it's important.

- Why is it important?

It's important because we need to have access to our books.

- Yeah, yeah.

- During this, in our ninth year, it is crucial that we have access to our books.

Like you said, we've been doing it since 2017, and our goal is to preserve, sustain, and ensure that our people and other people know about our experiences and our histories through the book.

It's important that we have families come out.

We take our kids to the zoo.

We take our kids to Cedar Point, the movies, but we don't frequently take them to book fairs because at first there weren't any black book fairs.

Well, guess what?

Now the book fairs are in town.

And we highly recommend that they bring their children out to make books become a lifestyle.

It needs to become a lifestyle because we learn so much through them.

We can learn how to solve problems.

We can learn how to handle conflict.

We may learn about romance.

It's unlimited.

- Right, right.

The thing I remember about books as a kid was that it allowed me to experience things that I couldn't experience in real life, right?

To imagine all kinds of places and things that weren't right there.

- Yeah, and then when you say back then, there weren't any books out there back then with characters that look like us.

- Well, that's right.

Not a lot of them, right?

- Not very few at all.

Jack and Jill when I was a kid, you know, Sounder.

But there weren't any books with positive images of children as protagonists and as leaders.

You know, we didn't have those books that taught our kids self-esteem.

- Right, right.

- You know, we didn't have a lot.

We had history books, but they all depicted negative images of African-Americans and black people back then.

So today, there are so many fantastic books out here that will teach self-esteem, that will encourage kids to learn how to solve problems.

And there are adult books out here too.

All genres, all across the board, you know?

So as a bookstore, you know, we do a lot of other things too, but we make sure that we have this book fair three or four times a year.

Because we want our people and other cultures to have access to our books, to our stories, through our lenses.

So that's why we do this book fair.

And it's free, open to the public.

Authors, they sign up.

We host between 30 to 60 authors.

At this particular event, we have 34 authors, and 15 of them are children books authors.

- There you go.

- So bring the kids out, get them excited.

You know, get the joy going about reading.

- Get them into reading.

- Yeah, life is, you know, books are life on paper.

You know, and that's our history.

- Yeah, yeah.

Speaking of authors, we have one of them here with us.

Kelly Duran-Jones.

Talk about the work that you do.

You write children's books among other books as well.

But talk about how you got into it, and I guess what you're aiming to accomplish with the storytelling that you're doing.

- Yeah, so I've been riding along with the Detroit Book City for at least five years.

And what I've experienced, at the beginning, I was the author of one book.

Since then, I have an array of books that tell my story.

I started off with adult books, workbooks, journals, things that help you create healthy habits and healing goals and healing journeys.

And since then, I've written my story.

So I am a person, along with being a speaker, author, and coach, I am a person that stutters.

And many people don't know it, even people that have known me for a long time.

So being around other authors who look like me, telling their stories, encouraged me to, and gave me the strength to write my own story.

And stuttering is something that you don't hear talked about often.

Once I got into the community of stutterers, which I didn't even know existed, I realized that my story can make an impact in my own community.

And so that's what I'm doing through leading a women's group, The Great Sister Circle, with just being an example of a leader in our own community.

- Yeah, yeah.

And one of your books, in fact, is about the importance of that voice, especially for children.

It's called "My Voice Matters," is that right?

- Absolutely.

- Yeah, tell me about that.

- So "My Voice Matters," the emotional, it talks about uncovering the emotional toll of stuttering.

And it gives the story from when I was, since I can remember, all the way up until now.

Because one thing I've learned, and the reason why I also added the children's aspect, if we can start those healthy habits as children, learning self-confidence, learning healing processes, creating healthy habits, then we could avoid a lot of the pitfalls that we may endure.

But this stuttering story that you don't hear children talk about, 'cause it's such a point of embarrassment and pain.

So I talk about those dark areas that nobody's talking about.

- Yeah, yeah.

How does writing and telling these stories, I guess, help you with the stuttering?

In other words, finding your voice in another way, in the written way, it seems like maybe it opens up the possibilities for your vocal voice.

- Absolutely.

Yes, absolutely, because we say that our voice matters, but we don't really know how much it matters until you get to the root cause of the things that may have hindered you or held you back in your life.

So when I started talking about stuttering and reminding people like, "Oh yeah, you did stutter."

And I'm like, "I still do."

But I've learned to control it.

I've learned to use processes where I'm breathing techniques and my eyes kind of go different ways sometimes, giving me a moment for the blocks and things like that.

So it's helped me with looking at the true picture of what I am.

So when I first started writing, I was writing about the surface.

Now I'm writing about the core and the soul of it all and the healing process of it.

- Wow.

Talk about how you choose authors like Kelly for this event.

And again, that connection between her story and the things that other people in our community are facing.

- Well, our book fairs are open to anyone who's published a book.

We don't turn anybody away.

I feel like if they've put something in a book, then they have something to share with the world.

So there's no discrimination.

We do focus, this is a specialized market.

So we specialize in African-American authors, but there's no discrimination.

We feel like at this time and era, let's be real, our books are being banned.

Our black history is trying, there are certain people in this world- - Taking it out of all kinds of places.

- Yeah, dismantle our stories.

My thing is, if they ban the books, this is gonna disproportionately impact our communities.

Our real true stories are gonna disappear.

And this is gonna impact our youth.

Say 2070 and 2060 come around, if we don't host these book fairs, what history are we gonna look at?

That's another reason, families, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, bring your kids to these book fairs, build up your home libraries, because our books cannot be banned.

If they are banned, another thing that's gonna impact us is we're going to, oh gosh, my thoughts, I get so passionate about this, Stephen.

But it will perpetuate ignorance.

- Yeah, right, that's right.

- And create fear among the black community.

We have to read our stories.

It will shape us and make us a better person overall, wholeheartedly.

- And I love that point that if we have the books ourselves in our homes, doesn't matter what they're banning, right?

- Exactly, generation to generation, they'll be on that bookshelf.

And in 2060s, our great-grandkids will see those books that are written today with the beautifully illustrated, vibrant graphics with the kids, children, doing positive things, positive lifestyles, because we do live positive lifestyles.

- Yeah, well, congratulations on nine years.

- Nine years.

- Of the book event.

Congratulations on your books.

And thanks for being here on "American Black Journal."

- Thank you for having us.

- Thank you so much.

- So that'll do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at AmericanBlackJournal.org.

And you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] From Delta Faucets to BEHR Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Announcer] DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Among the state's largest foundations committed to Michigan-focused giving, we support organizations that are doing exceptional work in our state.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(soft music)