PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (Feb. 7, 2024) – A group of Prairie View A&M University professors, authors, and researchers hope to change the conversation about how social change is catalyzed in the South.
Reflecting on “The Social, Cultural, and Political Contours of the Black and Brown Experience in the Bayou City,” their special edition journal aims to highlight the struggles and travails of Black and Brown Texans while displaying how social change is often slow and minimal in the southern region of the U.S.
“Often in historical works, you see a focus on a nostalgic past that is very Western-centric: cowboys, deserts, mountains, and a culture of rugged individualism,” said former PVAMU Professor Dr. Will Guzmán. “Even Black histories will be told from that angle. We think there are many untold stories and a more nuanced version of the Black experience still to be exposed.”
William T. Hoston, Ph.D.
Guzmán, who currently serves as assistant vice chancellor at North Carolina Central University, is part of this collective of history professors, along with Dr. William T. Hoston, PVAMU professor of political science, and PVAMU History Department faculty members, Drs. Malachi D. Crawford and Marco Robinson.
Hoston, former director of PVAMU’s Mellon Center for Faculty Excellence, reached out to Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South to solicit their interest in the project, one of his initiatives to enhance faculty development as Mellon director. Not only did the group of professors hope to increase research productivity in the Division of Social Sciences, but they also hoped to facilitate more avenues for discourse, such as with this special edition journal.
“We wanted the focus to be on how Black Americans and Latinx, both within and between each other, have participated and collaborated in social change,” Dr. Hoston said.
One primary purpose of the journal is to highlight new historical understandings and insights. To reframe that, Hoston said they began by asking a series of questions they hoped their readers and fellow researchers could ask themselves. The journal also serves as a starting place to deepen their understanding of Black and Brown history, specifically in the “Bayou City,” a.k.a. Houston. The varied pieces in this journal may help provide some answers with new perspectives.
“We began by discussing and asking: What are the economic, social, cultural, and political origins of this racial strife, and in what ways do these substantive issues persist in the South? How have Southern politics perpetuated the exclusion and marginalization of Black and Brown people in the political process, particularly local ordinances, land use, and zoning? What roles have Black and Brown women played in their communities and efforts towards political mobilization in the South, particularly at HBCUs?” Hoston said.
The journal also includes writings from Dr. Ronald E. Goodwin, department head and professor of history at PVAMU, and Dr. Farrah Gafford Cambrice, associate professor of sociology at PVAMU, among other professors from varied universities across the South.
In “Houston’s Super Neighborhoods Action Plans,” urban planner Goodwin examines zoning ordinances, land regulation, and private developers in their attempts to influence urban growth patterns.
In another chapter, Robinson and Cambrice explore the career of Afro-Cuban Mary Ernestine Suarez and her impact on the student body at PVAMU.
Threaded through each section is a call to readers to examine, research, and explore the contemporary intersections of Black and Brown experiences in the South. This goes hand-in-hand with the responsibility of HBCUs to ensure that students are part of this ongoing and changing conversation as they learn history and join in facilitating change in the future – something PVAMU has always been dedicated to equipping its students to do, with a spirit of “we can do it, we will do it, and we shall do it,” Guzmán said.
To view Southern Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of the South, click here.
By Meredith Mohr
-PVAMU-