Water, Black Life, and the Nature of Freedom in the 19th Century Great Lakes Region

• In Event: Migration, Africa, and Healing

Description for Program

In 1870 after a lifetime of running from enslavement, Zachariah and Mary Rebecca Nevitt Morgan sailed from Buffalo, NY over four Great Lakes and the Detroit River to what they hoped would be a permanent homeplace for their family, Northwestern Michigan. Upon their arrival, Zachariah and Mary labored with the Anishinaabe and white settlers to found Boyne City, MI. Before arriving in the Great Lakes Region, Zachariah and Mary’s search for freedom took them to Indiana, Massachusetts, Canada, Haiti, Maryland, and New York. Ultimately, it would be traversing the Great Lakes watershed that enabled Zachariah and Mary to arrive in a place where they could establish a life for themselves and their family as well as a burgeoning free African American community in Northwestern Michigan. In addition to the waterways and environments of the Great Lakes Region, the dispossession of the Anishinaabe people through the 1836 Treaty of Washington and white settler colonialism in Michigan made the Morgan’s homeplace in Boyne City possible.

The Morgan’s migration to the Great Lakes Region was a watershed moment—one that fundamentally shifts how we understand and periodize the migratory patterns and practices of African Americans. By migrating to the Midwest forty-years before the Great Migration and building their life in a rural space, the Morgan’s arrival to and life in Northwestern Michigan expands African American history in the Midwest beyond the Great Migration story of the 20th century and invites us to tell different stories about African American agency, autonomy, and placemaking. Through an analysis of the Morgan’s migration, this paper explores the circumstances that made possible and supported Black life in 19th century Northwestern Michigan orienting us to waterways, environments, and conditions beyond traditional conceptions of the Black Atlantic that provided migratory assistance and served as conduits to freedom for African Americans.

Author

• Gabrielle Ione Hickmon, University of Michigan