Robert P. Foster/The Warmth of Other Suns/Ahmed et al's Uprootings/Regroundings

(First, my apologies for being late to the party.  I had to reformat my entire email account after a hack disaster.  Long story.  But I digress.)

     This class has taken a fascinating turn already since its commencement roughly 4 weeks ago.  Pulling inspiration from both the Ahmed et. al article regarding "uprootings" and "regroundings," coupled with the story of Robert P. Foster in Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns, as well as our own discussions of how our personal narratives fit into the concept of the greater migration discourse on a historical level, it is safe to say that there is more to the concepts of "migration" and "borders" than one initially thinks of when contemplating the "textbook definition" of each term individually, much less in a relational sense.
     In the introductory paragraph of Ahmed et al's "Uprootings/Regroundings," we begin the dissection of migration as this experience in relation to home and belonging and how these concepts form a relationship to both the individual and the collective migration (Ahmed 1).  However, they go on to discuss how these concepts of "home" and "belonging" as well as the concepts of "here" versus "there" are neither concrete in definition nor are they unidirectional in movement.  We learn that when a migration occurs, the binary of "here" and "there" disintegrates into a relational bidirectional flow comprised of those who do the moving and those who stay behind, which leaves us with questions of "Who leaves? Why? Who stays behind? What are the motivations for each?" et cetera.  I particularly like to focus on the idea that Ahmed et al proposes in that "being grounded is not necessarily about being fixed; being mobile is not necessarily about being detached" (Ahmed et al 1). This concept is equally applicable to both our own journeys in life, whatever they may be, as well as the journeys of our respective characters in The Warmth of Other Suns,  Ida Mae, George, and Robert, each with their own hometowns, families, and histories, were not moving for the sake of detaching from their pasts or from their families, but rather, they were moving as a means of survival, of opportunities, as a means of creating a better future than their pasts and presents would allow.
     For Robert, his migration was about leaving the Jim Crow South and its rules, restrictions, and oppressive regulation of his dreams, potential, and abilities to achieve them.  Coming from a family that had previously achieved a level of privilege within the African American community of Monroe, Louisiana, that being that both his parents, as well as his older siblings, had all achieved a level of education that was rare for individuals in his social position within not only the community of Monroe but the South as well.  However, once Robert began achieving more and more status as an educated individual, complete with his aspirations of being a doctor and a surgeon, coupled later with his military experience, it would become painfully apparent that those dreams of freedom would not be achieved without a change of scenery.  Yet, in the end, Robert found that the Old Country, as many referred to it, was inescapable, to a degree.  Upon arriving in California, the Promised Land, as he'd come to refer to it in conversation with friends and family from Monroe, he found himself facing subtle injustices regarding both his integrity as an individual, as well as his integrity as a doctor and surgeon.  However, with time, determination, and an enormous amount of sacrifice, Robert built a  life, befitting himself and the standards of his family, as he thought they should be, and maintained that life throughout the remainder of his days.  He may have been absent from the lives of his children in one form or another; became a resented figure by his in-laws and some of his local acquaintances in Monroe; and potentially even by his wife, but in the last months of his life, the citizens of his Los Angeles world who happened to originally be from the South had nothing but praises to sing of the man many referred to as simply Doctor Foster and the innumerable ways he had touched their lives, changed their world, and would remain in their hearts, forever.
     For Robert, and for the millions of others involved in the Great Migration, there was a great deal of debate regarding whether or not this mass movement cross-country had truly been a success.  The initial census data proved it a failure, yet later data disproved the initial reactions, thus painting a contradictory portrait of the Great Migration, much like the contradictory ideologies that had been at its focus in the form of those who had decided to migrate to "greener pastures" and those who decided to remain behind and "stick it out." Neither is discredited for their decision, but rather, each is simply a storyline within a greater quiltwork of lives that intertwined in one form or another, for the better part of a century - in another place and time.