who am i?

i am a proud third-generation Black chicagolander who has lived on every side of chicago and in its north, south, and west suburbs. i am also the granddaughter of southern Black migrants who ventured north during the second wave of the great migration (1940-1970) and settled on the west side of chicago before moving to the south side. when i asked my beloved late grandfather why he left his home in the deep mississippi delta to come to chicago in 1957, he enthusiastically replied, "...because my brother told me that every day in chicago was like christmas!" my grandparents made the courageous choice to make my family and i chicagolanders who have lived in and moved through this city-region since their arrival. 

i do not take my grandparent's decision for granted. i honor their choice and the everyday Black chicagolanders like my family who continue to call this wondrous geography our home. 

my research, teaching, and public humanities scholarship explores how Black people shape the chicago metropolitan area (chicagoland) and how they are shaped by it. i focus on overlooked Black places within this geography by locating obscure archives, reinterpreting archival absences, and reconstructing submerged histories of Black settlements and the lives of Black people who existed before  the great migration. in doing so, i broaden the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological scope of the geography of Blackness with sustained attention to the spatial, social, cultural, economic, political, and ecological complexities of Black american life. 

i have published in the professional geographer, music and science, and the journal of urban affairs. i founded the Black geographies graduate student conference and the Black geosonicologies research group. i also helped develop berkeley Black geographies, a leading hub of Black geographic thought, as the first recipient of the Black geographies fellowship at the university of california, berkeley. during my time as a fellow, i authored the first Black geographies library guide with the uc berkeley library.