From the Search for the American Dream to the Journey Back to Southern Roots: Cinematic Representations of Black Migrations

Abstract

African Americans are excluded from the myth of the ‘nation of immigrants’ due to the forced nature of their relocation to the American continent. Yet, this exclusion can engender an association of blackness with lack of mobility and agency in the national imaginary, which obscures historical constrictions produced by slavery, segregation, and racism. In the last years, new narratives, ranging from historiography to cultural productions, have emerged that highlight how black Americans, despite all odds, have always resorted to migration as a way to fight racism. Cinema has played a major role in the representation of African Americans’ migrations as a fight to become masters of their own lives and has influenced the current reclaiming of the South in important ways.