A FORGOTTEN MIGRATION | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation

A FORGOTTEN MIGRATION tells the little-known story of "segregation scholarships" awarded by states in the US South to Black students seeking graduate education in the pre–Brown v. Board of Education era. Under the Plessy v. Ferguson decision, decades earlier, southern states could provide graduate opportunities for African Americans by creating separate but equal graduate programs at tax-supported Black colleges or by admitting Black students to historically white institutions. Most did neither and instead paid to send Black students out of state for graduate education.

Crystal R. Sanders examines Black graduate students who relocated to the North, Midwest, and West to continue their education with segregation scholarships, revealing the many challenges they faced along the way. Students that entered out-of-state programs endured long and tedious travel, financial hardship, racial discrimination, isolation, and homesickness. With the passage of Brown in 1954, segregation scholarships began to wane, but the integration of graduate programs at southern public universities was slow. In telling this story, Sanders demonstrates how white efforts to preserve segregation led to the underfunding of public Black colleges, furthering racial inequality in American higher education.

Dr. Crystal Sanders is joining us on the Busboys stage alongside Dr. Marcia Chatelain to share more about their research on Black Southerners, segregation scholarships, and the debt owed to public HBCUs. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Dr. Sanders will be signing following the program.

This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 6:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of A FORGOTTEN MIGRATION will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is in person and will not be livestreamed. 

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Crystal R. Sanders is an award-winning historian of the United States in the twentieth century.  Her research and teaching interests include African American History, Black Women's History, and the History of Black Education.  She received her BA (cum laude) in History and Public Policy from Duke University and a Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University.  She is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Emory University.  Previously, she was an Associate Professor of History and the former Director of the Africana Research Center at Pennsylvania State University.  During the 2020-2021 academic year, she was a fellow at the National Humanities Center.

Sanders is the author of A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2024. She is also the author of A Chance for Change: Head Start and Mississippi's Black Freedom Struggle published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2016 as part of the John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture.  The book won the 2017 Critics Choice Award from the American Educational Research Association and the 2017 New Scholar’s Book Award from Division F of the American Educational Research Association.  The book was also a finalist for the 2016 Hooks National Book Award.  Sanders’ work can also be found in many of the leading history journals including the Journal of Southern History, the North Carolina Historical Review, and the Journal of African American History.  

Sanders is the recipient of a host of fellowships and prizes.  These honors include the C. Vann Woodward Prize from the Southern Historical Association, the Huggins-Quarles Award from the Organization of American Historians, and the Equity Award from the American Historical Association.  She has also received an Andrew Mellon Graduate Fellowship in Humanistic Studies, a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, a National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a Visiting Scholars Fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Marcia Chatelain is the Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.  The author of South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration (Duke University Press, 2015) she teaches about women’s and girls’ history, the U.S. Civil Rights Movement, as well as black capitalism. Her latest book, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright Publishing Co./W.W. Norton, 2020) examines the intricate relationship among African American politicians, civil rights organizations, communities, and the fast-food industry. Chatelain has received numerous awards for Franchise, including the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History, the Hagley Prize in Business History, the Organization of American Historians Lawrence W. Levine Award, the Hurston Wright Legacy Award, the Hooks Institute National Book Award, the Alfred and Fay Chandler Book Award and the James Beard Foundation Award for Writing.

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