The Black Mecca Factor

Race has played a significant role in shaping the motives of Afro-Caribbean migrants to Atlanta. Afro-Caribbeans are drawn to Atlanta because (to them) it is a black city. Almost all of the Afro-Caribbean immigrants that I interviewed reported being greatly attracted to Atlanta because of its large black population, particularly its core of black professionals, and not its pool of Caribbean residents. Atlanta has what I call a “black mecca factor,” that sets it apart from most other Caribbean destinations, or possible destinations.[1] It is unique because of the great influence the large size, and relatively high socioeconomic class status, of its African American population has had on shaping the city. Atlanta is home to the second largest black population behind New York, as of 2010, pushing Chicago out of its long-standing position among US metros with the largest black populations. Though Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta are very likely included in the US Census count of Atlanta’s black population, many Afro-Caribbeans in this study reported that the city’s rapidly growing Caribbean community didn’t influence their decision to migrate there. The confluence of factors that make Atlanta a black mecca is very important because there are plenty of places, especially in the South, such as Baltimore, Charlotte, or Houston, with a large black population that don’t necessarily have the number of middle class blacks or the concentration of black power that Atlanta has. As a black mecca, Atlanta is viewed as offering black people many more opportunities for success and upward mobility than other cities.

Jefferson, a fifty-six year old transplant from Dominica, described how Atlanta’s status as a black mecca very much played a part in his decision to move to Atlanta from Hartford, Connecticut in 1989. He thought that the city was particularly attractive after he read about how it came into prominence through a succession of black mayors and government officials. Karen, a second-generation Kittian immigrant in her thirties who relocated to Atlanta from Los Angeles in 2002, described her desire to live in a black mecca. She told me that it was important for her to be in a community of successful black Americans, who were professionals, government workers, and entrepreneurs, and who were motivated and making changes in the world, who were motivated, and who were entrepreneurs, and not in a place where blacks were struggling and just getting by. She felt that being in an atmosphere where blacks were successful was critical for her to progress.

 For many Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta, the city’s large black population greatly influenced their decision to move there. Terri, a Jamaican-born migrant in her early thirties who relocated to Atlanta from New Orleans in 2001, described how the city’s large black community was very important in her decision to move to Atlanta. She told me that it was important to her to be around “her people.” In fact, several Afro-Caribbeans in this study reported that prior to their move they didn’t know that there was a Caribbean community in Atlanta but they knew about its large black population. Alana, a New York-born transplant of Barbadian descent in her mid-thirties who moved to Atlanta from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, told me that the Caribbean community in Atlanta played no role in her decision to move there but that the city’s large black population played a major role. She explained that it was important to her to be someplace where she felt comfortable. She wanted to be around black people (though not too many) and liked that in Atlanta she was able to see people that looked like her. Alana’s feelings were reiterated by other Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta that I interviewed. They felt it was important to live in a city with a large number of black people, where they might see other black faces daily, and they saw Atlanta as place, unlike many of the new immigrant destinations in the US, that provided them with this particular experience.

When migrants compared it to other cities that they lived in, Atlanta’s black mecca factor became most evident. When I asked Terri, a Jamaican-born, New York-raised migrant in her thirties, how Atlanta compared to other places that she lived, for example, New Orleans, which was the last city that she lived in prior to moving to Atlanta, she stated: “New Orleans and Atlanta are very different. New Orleans is missing the large black professional community that Atlanta has. I felt that a young 20s professional class didn’t exist in New Orleans…That was one of the reasons I knew I wouldn’t stay in New Orleans due to the lack of [a black] professional class.” For Afro-Caribbeans that moved to Atlanta, many of whom were mostly middle class and professionals, it was important to them that they live in a city where they weren’t one of a few black professionals there, but one of many. They felt Atlanta offered them that an environment where black professionals thrived and where Afro-Caribbean professionals could thrive and grow. Simon, a Trinidadian transplant to Atlanta in his late thirties, summed up best how this notion of Atlanta’s status as a black mecca could impact positively Afro-Caribbeans participating in the migration there. He stated: “you almost felt like you were supposed to succeed when you came here because the atmosphere was just so overwhelming in a positive way for black people. So it was very motivating and very rewarding to be here.”

In Atlanta, Afro-Caribbeans tend to settle mostly in suburban areas where African Americans are the dominant group rather than areas where whites predominate. The majority of the people who live within the Atlanta city limits are racially black, making up 54% of the city inhabitants 2010, as opposed to whites, who make up 38%. The region’s legacy of racially segregated growth has had an impact on the residential patterns of immigrant newcomers in Atlanta. “Immigrants appear to be making inroads in the northern part of the metro area, which has traditionally been the whiter part of the racially divided region, and are less established in historically African American neighborhoods” (Singer 2008: 18). According to the work of historian Mary Odem, “there is very little foreign-born settlement in areas with the highest concentrations of African American residents, mainly in south Fulton County, including southwestern Atlanta, and southern DeKalb County, where African American communities compose more than three-fourths of the population” (2008: 119). The findings of Odem’s research, and of most research on immigration to Atlanta, are based mostly on the experiences and residential patterns of Mexicans immigrants. In contrast, these settlement patterns do not hold true for black immigrants. Previous research has shown that Afro-Caribbeans tend to live in predominantly black neighborhoods (Tedrow and Crowder 2001).

Afro-Caribbean immigrants report migrating to Atlanta for a variety of reasons, including school, warmer climate, better quality of life, and better opportunities for homeownership and employment; however, these factors alone do not account for what is drawing Afro-Caribbeans specifically to Atlanta, and not to other cities with similar characteristics, such as Charlotte, Phoenix, or Portland (Singer 2008). Though there are warm climates, low housing costs, jobs, and top universities in other cities in the US, all in all, the most salient theme running throughout the migration stories of Afro-Caribbeans for moving specifically to Atlanta is race. Afro-Caribbeans are attracted to the possibilities that the city offers, namely the possibilities that it offers for black people to live well and to do well, something they feel that they wouldn’t be as likely to do in the places that they left behind.

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[1] Washington, D.C. is another destination that possesses the black mecca factor, in that has a majority black population (and black political leaders) and nearby suburbs that are home to a flourishing African American middle class. Like Atlanta, Washington, D.C. is a top destination for black migrants in the US and has a large and growing Afro-Caribbean (and African) immigrant population. In fact, several Afro-Caribbeans in this study mentioned that they considered moving to the D.C. area before they moved to Atlanta.

“Move to Atlanta, You Will Live Longer!”

The second major theme among the migration stories of Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta is moving to the southern city for a better quality of life. The majority of the Afro-Caribbean migrants that I spoke to listed quality of life factors as playing as important a role in their decision to move to Atlanta.. The indicators of the better quality of life that Atlanta offered varied from migrant to migrant; but, for the most part, the Afro-Caribbean transplants in Atlanta that I interviewed indicated a better quality of life as having a warmer climate, thriving environment, and slower and more relaxed pace, compared to the cities that they left.

Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study reported being attracted to Atlanta because they viewed the city as “a good place for a new beginning.” Those who lived in other US cities before moving to Atlanta—especially those who lived in cities in the Northeast for a number of years—told me that they heard the city was up-and-coming and thought it would be a good place to start over. Talia, a migrant of Trinidadian descent in her late thirties, didn’t know much about Atlanta before moving there in 1996, but she had heard from others while she was still in New York that it was an up-and-coming city. She told me that at the time she was young and wanted to get out of New York City and so she decided to try living in Atlanta. Another Afro-Caribbean migrant, Jennifer, a Jamaican woman in her late forties, also decided to move to Atlanta, as she and her husband were looking for a place to start over and heard it was an up-and-coming city.

Atlanta’s warm climate was a major draw for Afro-Caribbean immigrants. Many of those who migrated from cities in the Northeast, particularly New York and Boston, described being tired of the cold and snowy winters in the Northeast. Having lived in the Northeast most of my life, I completely understood why Atlanta’s warmer climate would appeal to Afro-Caribbeans living there. However, when I moved to Atlanta in 2009, the climate was much colder than I expected, especially during the winter months, when I saw a few snowfalls. Several Afro-Caribbeans who had lived in Atlanta since the 1990s informed me that the southern city’s climate had gotten colder over the past decade. Despite this, Atlanta still has warmer weather than New York and the other northern cities that Afro-Caribbeans moved from. Andrew, a Trinidadian-born migrant in his sixties, was one of many Caribbean New Yorkers who left the city in search of a warmer climate. After living in New York for 25 years, Andrew decided to leave and relocate someplace warmer because he no longer wanted to shovel snow every winter. He told me that he chose Atlanta mainly based on its weather.

Along with a warmer climate, Afro-Caribbeans that moved from northern US cities were looking for a slower pace of life in Atlanta. This was especially true for New York-origin Afro-Caribbean transplants in Atlanta, many of whom told me that they felt New York was too fast-paced, with its 24-hour lifestyle, and decided to relocate to Atlanta so they could slow down and live a more relaxed life. Migrants also mentioned moving to Atlanta to get away from the hostility that has become synonymous with New York City. Afro-Caribbean immigrants in Atlanta that I spoke to described that people in Atlanta as generally being friendlier than those in northern cities. Many told me that they had changed significantly from living in Atlanta, becoming calmer and friendlier than when they lived elsewhere. They claimed to notice the change the most when they went back to the North to visit friends.

Dwight’s migration story provides a good example of how he viewed moving to Atlanta as a way to improve the quality of life of him and his family. He was born in St. Kitts and grew up in the Bronx after his family immigrated there when he was a child. Dwight and his wife moved from New York to Atlanta in 2007 because they wanted to slow down. Their lives had become too busy in New York. He was a partner in a New York law firm, working 65 to 80 hours a week, while his wife was a social worker at a private agency, working about 60 hours a week. Due to their schedules, they were passing each other coming to and from work. They wanted to start a family, so they decided to leave New York and relocate to Atlanta because they thought it offered a better quality of life than New York. Dwight got this idea about Atlanta, after noticing how much younger and relaxed his wife’s cousin, Anthony (whose story of moving to Atlanta on faith I discussed earlier in this chapter) looked than they did, whenever he would come back to New York to visit. Since they moved to Atlanta, Dwight and his wife get complimented on how young and relaxed they look, when they visit New York. When I interviewed Dwight, he told me that he believed you could add years to your life by moving to Atlanta.

            Like Dwight, Afro-Caribbean migrants who were looking for a better quality of life saw moving to Atlanta as having significant health benefits. Whether these perceived health improvements are related to moving to Atlanta, or to moving out of crowded northern metro areas, is not clear. But, what is clear is that the possibility for improving their quality of life plays a significant role in the movement of Afro-Caribbean immigrants to Atlanta. Not only quality of life has drawn Afro-Caribbeans to Atlanta but the idea that for them, Atlanta represents a universe of black people from different cultural, educational, class, and social background and different parts of the world and United States.

Why Afro-Caribbeans Are Moving to Atlanta: Homeownership

Unlike their previous migrations (e.g., New York, Boston, Miami), the majority of Atlanta’s Afro-Caribbean population has settled in suburban communities surrounding the city. Atlanta is a relatively small city at the center an expansive metropolitan area.[1] I found that many Afro-Caribbean migrants bought homes in the surrounding suburbs, as far as an hour outside of the city limits, rather than in the city of Atlanta. Though they complained about the long commute into the city, the traffic, and the missed the convenience of public transportation (particularly by New York-origin migrants), they claimed that it was all worth it for the opportunity to own a home.

Afro-Caribbeans live throughout the 10-county metro area. Their residential dispersion may be due to the Atlanta area’s urban sprawl. After four decades of nonstop expansion, the Atlanta metro area has become the epitome of modern urban sprawl—a vast expanse of housing tracts and condominium and apartment complexes, with shopping centers, mini-malls, convenience stores, and office parks scattered chaotically across the landscape (Keating 2001: 7).[2] The majority of Afro-Caribbean settlement has been in the eastern Atlanta suburbs, with the largest concentrations in the towns of Stone Mountain and Lithonia. Both towns are located within DeKalb County, which is home to the largest concentration of Afro-Caribbeans in metro Atlanta, with almost half of the region's Caribbean population according to the 2000 US Census. Communities with significant Afro-Caribbean populations in the western suburbs include Powder Springs and Douglasville. In this study, most of the Afro-Caribbeans lived in Fulton County while the second largest concentration lived in DeKalb County.

It is important to note that often when I asked Afro-Caribbeans in this study where they lived, they typically referred to the county that they lived in. For example, they would say they lived in Cobb County rather than saying they lived in the town of Powder Springs (located in Cobb County). The metropolitan area is broken into a 10-county region. Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett, Cobb, and Clayton are the five original counties, and continue to be the core of the metro area, and Cherokee, Douglas, Fayette, Henry and Rockdale make up the remaining counties. This is likely due to the fact that the counties that make up metro Atlanta area have significant governmental authority, creating noticeable differences between counties. For example, although DeKalb County and Fulton County border each other and both contain part of the city of Atlanta, Fulton County has higher taxes than DeKalb County. This became clear to me after I bought the same bar stool in two different Target stores---one in Fulton County and another in DeKalb County—and noticed that the store in Fulton County had a higher total cost than the one in DeKalb County. It is also likely that people in Georgia find it easier to relate to the larger geographic region represented by a county than a smallish town no one may have heard of.

Atlanta boasts what I call a “bling-bling culture,” a cultural economy that endorses the ownership of expensive, ostentatious clothing, jewelry, homes, and cars. In Atlanta’s bling-bling culture, possessing these items, or appearing to possess them—by renting, leasing, or purchasing cheaper imitations of luxury items (e.g., buying a fake Louis Vuitton handbag, leasing a Lamborghini, or renting a mansion), allows a person to project to others an image of success, whether it be real or false. In New York City, for example, many view owning a Manhattan apartment or condominium, particularly in the neighborhoods of the Upper East Side, Tribeca, and Battery City Park, as a symbol of wealth and success, whereas in Atlanta, living in a gated community or a McMansion—large (and in some cases palatial) homes that have become a standard of living for Atlanta’s middle-class to upper-class—is a symbol of wealth and success. Another distinct feature of Atlanta’s bling-bling culture is that a large number of its consumers are black. If you were to look inside the upscale shops of New York’s famed Fifth Avenue or its high-priced apartments on Park Avenue, you would likely see predominantly white faces; however, if you were to look inside the upscale shops in Atlanta’s Phipps Plaza or in its many McMansions, you would definitely see a relatively large number of black faces. Because of the large number of wealthy blacks in Atlanta, it is not uncommon in Atlanta to see a number of black people driving luxury cars, shopping in high-end boutiques, and living in mansions. In a CBS News report on black return migration to the South, it alludes to Atlanta’s bling-bling culture, stating that “black suburban Atlanta may look like Beverly Hills, but it's Mecca for many new migrants who are buying homes worth from $200,000 to more than $2 million. And new subdivisions keep sprouting, marketed especially to blacks” (Leung 2009: 1). Atlanta’s south DeKalb County rivals Prince George County in Maryland as one of most affluent black communities in US (Bullard 2000). But, you would not likely find the culture of ostentatiousness there that you see in Atlanta. Atlanta’s bling-bling culture is greatly influenced by not only its large number of wealthy and middle class but also its large number of black celebrities, leading to it commonly being referred to as “Black Hollywood.” No other “chocolate” city (another name for cities with a large black population) has such a large mix of black wealth, power, and celebrity like Atlanta has. 

During the year that I lived in Atlanta, I saw more luxury cars (many times with a black driver behind the wheel) than the entire eight years that I lived in New York. Traveling around Atlanta, especially in the neighborhood of Buckhead where I lived, you would likely see many Mercedes, BMVs, Jaguars, and other luxury cars on the road.[3] I saw so many that it seemed as if the cars were being given away. The bling-bling culture was also visible in day-to-day life. Going out in Atlanta was like a daily pageant of what kind of expensive jewelry, high-end clothing labels, and luxury cars that one had or appeared to have. Several New York-origin Afro-Caribbean migrants that I spoke to claimed that they didn’t like the ostentatious behavior, or the need to “show out” in Atlanta, pointing to examples of seeing while out in public of people “dressing up” to go to the mall or using a limo to arrive at the local clubs. They said that they didn’t see this ostentatious, wealth-advertising behavior as much in New York as they did in Atlanta. It may very well be that they weren’t as close to these kinds of wealth in New York as they are in Atlanta.

However, despite how they felt about its ostentatiousness, many Afro-Caribbeans moved to Atlanta to participate in and enjoy parts of its bling-bling culture, for example, living in McMansions and driving luxury cars. It mattered to the migrants that living in Atlanta gave them the chance to have things that others—particularly family and friends still living in the communities that they left—saw as symbols of success. Atlanta was viewed as offering better opportunities for homeownership, due to its lower housing costs, than traditional Caribbean destinations in the North (specifically New York). Many of the Afro-Caribbeans that migrated from New York specifically told me that they were attracted to Atlanta because you could get “more house for your money” there, compared to New York. Many migrants reported that they were able to buy a large house in Atlanta for the same amount of money as a one-bedroom condo in New York, or a small house in its outer suburbs. Dwight, a Kittian migrant who moved from New York with his wife, told me that he liked how much one could get in terms of property size in Atlanta. He and his wife initially relocated to the southern city to start a family and wanted a house with enough space for them and their future children. When they lived in New York, they owned a small townhome in the Bronx. But, when they moved to Atlanta, they were able to afford a large three-bed/three-bath home, featuring a spacious master bedroom suite, basement, open kitchen living space, dining room, formal living room, garage, and sizeable backyard. Atlanta offers a variety of housing options, such as gated communities, McMansions, townhomes, condos, and rental apartments, to black residents, of varying socioeconomic classes, from the working class to the upper class. I saw an example of this firsthand in 2007 when I visited my best friend who at the time was a fulltime graduate student in Atlanta. She was able to rent, with a roommate who was working as a teacher, a two-bed/two-bath townhome with a garage in a gated community in East Atlanta for $1225/month, while at the same time I (also a fulltime graduate student) was renting, with a roommate who was working as a paralegal, a two-bed/one-bath apartment in a brownstone in Brooklyn for over $1500/month.

Contemporary immigration research has revealed a growing trend of immigrant suburban settlement since the 1990s (Singer, Hardwick, and Brettell 2008). More immigrants are settling in the suburbs than in the cities of the 100 largest metro areas, opposed to the image of immigrant enclaves in cities where there are services for them (Singer 2008). As many new jobs and housing opportunities developed in the suburbs, immigrants have followed and settled in the suburbs, with many immigrant newcomers bypassing major cities and moving directly in suburban communities. In Atlanta, this is especially the case given the high cost of living in the city limits for people wanting a large home, or just a home with enough space to accommodate a family.

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[1] The Atlanta metro area had a 2010 total population of 5,268,860, while the city had a total population of 420,003.

[2] Atlanta led the nation in residential construction between 1990 and 1996. Most new jobs and newcomers in Atlanta in the 1990s settled outside the city (Bullard 2000: 9).

[3] There were a string of luxury car dealerships within a mile of each other on Piedmont Avenue, which was main road closest to my apartment.

MOVING ON UP: AFRO-CARIBBEANS’ REASONS FOR MOVING TO ATLANTA

“You move here and you get to buy stuff…become a homeowner.” – Karen, a second-generation Kittian transplant in her early thirties who moved to Atlanta from Los Angeles in 2002.

Jobs

Afro-Caribbean outward migration from major immigrant destinations like New York to Atlanta is being driven by a desire for greater opportunities (for blacks). I found that a large number of Afro-Caribbeans reported moving to Atlanta because they viewed it as offering them better opportunities for employment, education, and homeownership than the places that they left. Boasting a rapidly growing economy, especially in the late 1980s and the 1990s, Atlanta attracted thousands of migrants from both within and outside the US to the region. The 1996 Summer Olympics sparked large development in the city. In preparation for the Olympics, Atlanta built apartment complexes, parks, and businesses in the downtown area, where the majority of the sporting events and ceremonies took place. The construction boom also extended to its outer suburbs. Additionally, Atlanta has become home to several major corporations, such as The Coca Cola Company, Delta Airlines, CNN, and Home Depot. Like other transplants, many Afro-Caribbeans were attracted to Atlanta by its thriving job market. Samirah, a second-generation Barbadian migrant in her mid-thirties who moved to Atlanta in 1996, after completing graduate school in Texas, described what motivated her to move to the southern metropolis: “I came to Atlanta for economic opportunity…I didn’t have any friends here. I came strictly for a job…and they had a lot going for, you know, a lot of development, which is also a detriment to them now. But, a lot of development was happening.”

Many of those who arrived in Atlanta in the 1990s spoke of the abundance of jobs in the city at that time. They enthusiastically described to me how companies in Atlanta, during the 1990s, were hiring people on the spot and, for example, how someone could visit the city for a weekend and easily get a job during that period. One Afro-Caribbean transplant from New York told me how soon after arriving in Atlanta in 1997 both she and her boyfriend at the time easily got jobs with the company Public Storage, which also provided them with employee housing.. Similarly, another Afro-Caribbean migrant recounted that she moved because in the early 1990s, people in New York were talking about how there were going to be many jobs available in Atlanta; she moved to Atlanta in 1996. For many of the Afro-Caribbeans that migrated to Atlanta in the 1990s, looking to take advantage of the city’s booming job market, their decision to move to the new destination was like taking a leap of faith. 

Atlanta has become a major destination for not only Afro-Caribbean immigrants looking to achieve upward socioeconomic mobility, but also for those who were already successful and upwardly mobile. The southern metropolis also boasts a wide availability of jobs for highly skilled professionals. Among the Afro-Caribbean professionals in this study, none reported having trouble finding employment in Atlanta, including those who migrated to the city in the 1990s and in the 2000s. This might be due to the fact that several migrants arrived in Atlanta already with jobs, after the companies that they worked for transferred them there. Interestingly, a few Afro-Caribbean migrants that I spoke to reported that they were considering moving to Atlanta before their jobs relocated them there. Kerry, a second-generation Trinidadian immigrant in her late thirties, received a promotion at her job that required her to move to Atlanta in 1994, rather than in 1996 as she was planning. Though she was migrating from New York to Atlanta, her transition to Atlanta felt seamless because all she had to do was pack her bags and head there. At the time, the company that she worked for had moved entire departments of its New York offices to Atlanta, so she already knew people, when she arrived. Similarly, Keith, a thirty-five year old migrant of Trinidadian descent, also moved to Atlanta after his job relocated him there. He was in the military and was first stationed at Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia from 2006 to 2007. He told me that after he completed a 15-month assignment in Iraq, he asked to be assigned back in Georgia in 2008 because he and his wife liked living in metro Atlanta so much.

            The recent economic recession that has had great impact upon the United States and many other countries has also had an impact on Atlanta’s economy by decreasing the availability of jobs. The experience of Jeff, a Barbadian transplant in his late twenties, is a good example of how post-1990 migrants have been affected by Atlanta’s declining economy. He moved to Atlanta from Boston in 2003 and had been unemployed for several months, since he got laid off from his construction job in early 2009. He told me that it had been hard to find permanent work because Atlanta’s construction industry was hit very hard by the recession. He explained that many construction projects had been postponed, or abandoned completely, due to lack of funding. While I lived in Atlanta from 2009 to 2010, I came across several abandoned building projects (with for-sale signs), specifically for apartment complexes, around the metro area. Ironically, at the same time I saw many construction projects under development around Atlanta. When I was searching for an apartment in which to live, I visited several brand new apartment complexes around the city. The apartment complex that I ultimately chose was built 6 months before I moved there in late August 2009, and was still under construction when I moved in. The Atlanta area continues to build and expand as if it anticipates continued rapid population growth for another decade or two. And, despite the recession, Afro-Caribbean immigrants continue to migrate to Atlanta in large numbers. In a report on race and ethnicity for the Brookings Institution, William Frey (2010) found that Latino and Asian migration to new immigrant destinations, including Atlanta, had slowed due to the recession and the housing market collapse, and had redirected towards traditional destinations. However, my research shows that Afro-Caribbean migration to Atlanta has not been slowed by the recession. Though the declining economy has tightened up the city’s job market, many of the Afro-Caribbean migrants I interviewed told me that they still saw Atlanta as a place that offered many opportunities—especially for homeownership and a better quality of life—and most importantly, that they would recommend other Afro-Caribbeans move there.

Afro-Caribbean Migrants' Knowledge of the South Before Moving to Atlanta- Pt 2

In his book Crosscurrents: West Indian Immigrants and Race, Milton Vickerman (1999) argues that Afro-Caribbeans tend to distinguish generally between the North and the South in the US, ascribing positive characteristics to the latter and the opposite to the former. He states that they tend to view the South as being more similar to the Caribbean than the North, knowing the South to have warmer weather, what they perceive as a more easygoing climate, a deeper sense of community, and “traditional values.” Vickerman argues that their positive views of the South may have influenced the large concentration of Afro-Caribbeans in Miami and their growing movement away from their traditional concentration in New York to southern cities like Atlanta.

Though I did not ask them about their prior knowledge of New York—a major destination for Caribbean immigrants for over a century--, I suspect that my respondents—including those who had lived in New York and those who had never lived there (or in the US) before moving to Atlanta—would have been able to list comfortably and quickly a number of things about the major US metro, such as its climate, major attractions (e.g., Statue of Liberty and Times Square), and neighborhoods. Previous research has shown that many Afro-Caribbean immigrants arrive in New York with significant knowledge about the city—especially the Caribbean neighborhoods in the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn and the long-running and widely attended West Indian Carnival on Labor Day—through stories from friends and family who previously migrated there (Kasinitz 1992). Anthropologist Karen Fog Olwig (2001) found that New York was a central location in some Jamaican family networks and served as place for family members living in the Caribbean, Canada, the US, and elsewhere to meet and get to know each other. Migrants are critical in generating and spreading information about a destination by telling stories of their experiences to family and friends and by providing them with the opportunity and incentive to visit and learn about the place firsthand. Because Afro-Caribbean’s migration to, and settlement in, Atlanta is new, and their community there is relatively small (in comparison to the million-plus Afro-Caribbeans in the traditional destination of New York), the information about the southern city is not likely to be as great or as widely known within the Caribbean diaspora as information about destinations that have older and larger Caribbean communities. As I discussed in the preceding chapter, the majority of the Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study were among the first of their family or friends to move to Atlanta and thus didn’t have the availability of an established Caribbean network already there to help them learn about the city or to facilitate their migration process.

For those migrants that arrived in the 1990s, the media played a critical role in generating and perpetuating—especially leading up to the 1996 Summer Olympics—positive and attractive images of Atlanta that counterbalanced the negative images (or lack of images) that many of my respondents said they heard of the city prior to moving there. Several scholars have pointed to the Summer Olympics as a turning point for Atlanta, in terms of economic, structural, and demographic growth, and also as the catalyst for its emergence into an international city. The opportunities that developed in the city for the Olympics greatly attracted Afro-Caribbeans and many migrants from around the US and the world to Atlanta.

Though many of the Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study said they “didn’t know much” about Atlanta before they moved there, they are directly contributing to the information about Atlanta within their own Caribbean social network. A small number of migrants that I spoke to reported knowing a lot about Atlanta before moving there. Those migrants obtained their pre-migration information about Atlanta and the opportunities that it offered through their network connections in city and from visiting the city, sparking their interest in moving there. One such migrant was Dwight, whose story was discussed in Chapter 1. He had visited Atlanta to attend fraternity functions a couple times prior to moving there from New York with his wife in 2007. He also had two network connections in Atlanta—his fraternity brothers, and his wife’s cousin Anthony who moved to the city in 1994 from New York (and who also happened to be his fraternity brother)—that greatly assisted him and his wife with the migration process by providing information about Atlanta, suggesting where in the city he should live, and helping him find a job. Knowing people there prior to moving to Atlanta allowed him to arrive already holding a wealth of knowledge about the city. So, when I asked him what he knew about Atlanta before he moved, he quickly listed a number of things about the southern city; comparing it to New York, he told me that he liked that Atlanta had a slower pace, a lower cost of living, a more open and friendly environment, and a larger selection of large, affordable homes. In contrast, when I asked Dwight’s wife’s cousin Anthony the same question, he replied: “I didn’t know much about Atlanta. It was around the time of the 1996 Olympics and I knew it was an up-and-coming city and that many opportunities were starting to surface.” Dwight and Anthony’s stories demonstrate the important role networks play in helping the migration process and helping new Afro-Caribbeans transition to their new lives in Atlanta, but it also reveals that Afro-Caribbeans were moving to Atlanta regardless of whether they knew a little or a lot about the region.

Afro-Caribbean Migrants' Knowledge of the South Before to Moving to Atlanta - Pt 1

When I asked Afro-Caribbeans in Atlanta what they knew about Atlanta and the South before they moved there, most of them told me that they knew very little or nothing about the region prior to their migration. Though they did recognize that there were differences between the South and the rest of the US, what the migrants did know about the region was generally basic information based on its past history—largely its history up to 1965.

When asked what they knew about the South before moving to Atlanta, they listed, for example, slavery, the Civil Rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., and the region’s history of violence and discrimination against all peoples of African ancestry. These responses were common among Afro-Caribbeans regardless of when they moved to Atlanta. Judith, a Jamaican-born migrant in her fifties who moved to Atlanta in the early 1980s, told me that before she moved, she knew very little about Atlanta except for what she learned from history books. She stated, “I was a history teacher in the Caribbean. I knew about the Civil War. But I knew very little about [how] southerners lived today. Most of what I knew was from the history books.” Arriving in Atlanta about twenty years later, Karen, a New York-born transplant of Kittian descent in her early thirties who moved to the southern city from Los Angeles in 2002, similarly told me that she had little prior knowledge about the region except for its past history of slavery and racism. She stated: “All I knew was slavery and racism to be honest…I really didn’t know much. I basically came down in faith.”

Interestingly, when I asked about their pre-migration knowledge of Atlanta, most of the Afro-Caribbeans that I interviewed started off their responses with this disclaimer of “I didn’t know much about Atlanta except for” before proceeding to tell me what they did know. Like Karen, Ashley, a transplant in her forties of Jamaican descent who moved to Atlanta from Boston in 2007, started saying she knew little about Atlanta and then proceeded to tell me the few things she did know about the city before moving there. She stated, “I didn’t know a whole lot about Atlanta before moving. I knew it was an up and coming city and there were lot of opportunities for black Americans.” This pattern in the migrants’ responses showed me that my respondents knew more about Atlanta than they realized or admitted (to me or themselves). I thought it was very unlikely that any migrant would move to a place without knowing a few things about their new home, unless the move was involuntary, such as in the case of a minor child moving with family, a refugee being resettled, or military personnel being assigned to a new station, and with further questioning my respondents proved to know significant details about Atlanta before moving there.

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Afro-Caribbean Social Networks in Atlanta-Pt 3

While a number of Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study used some form of social network--either an ethnic or race network-- to move to and settle in Atlanta, there were others who migrated without social networks. These migrants tended to have jobs waiting for them upon arrival in Atlanta. Their company either transferred them to an office in Atlanta or they applied for and got a new job in Atlanta prior to their move. A small number of Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study were able to move to Atlanta without networks because they came to the city to attend college or graduate school. The colleges and universities provided, or helped these Afro-Caribbean migrants to find, housing and also provided financial support to help the migration process. Atlanta is home to several top universities, such as Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Georgia State University, and to the world’s largest consortium of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), the Atlanta University Center, which includes Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, and Morehouse School of Medicine. A few Afro-Caribbean migrants informed me that many young Caribbean-born migrants directly came to Atlanta specifically to attend one of its colleges and universities and generally stayed in the city after they graduated, instead of returning home to the Caribbean. Atlanta’s HBCUs have played an especially significant role in drawing college-aged Afro-Caribbeans to the city. Of all the schools in Atlanta, Morehouse College (an all-male institution) attracted most of the education-driven Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study. Notably, almost all of these migrants were Trinidadian males and had moved directly to Atlanta from the Caribbean island. Simon, a Trinidadian migrant in his late thirties, explained to me how an athletic scholarship brought him from his island home to Georgia in 1992. He told me that he always dreamed of playing college basketball and was fortunate that after he finished playing in a tournament in Jamaica in 1991, as part of Trinidad’s national basketball team in Jamaica, he started getting calls from colleges and coaches who saw him play. He had several options but decided to attend Georgia Military College, a junior college located in Milledgeville, Georgia (two hours outside of Atlanta), because they offered him a full scholarship. After a year, Simon then transferred to Morehouse College, which offered to accept him and the other Trinidadian basketball players who had emigrated with him to attend Georgia Military College.

I consider Afro-Caribbeans who moved to Atlanta without networks “pioneers” because they were among the first (of their family and friends) to settle in the region, and contributed, by their presence in region, to the creation of new Caribbean networks/communities in Atlanta for other Caribbean migrants whom arrive after them to utilize during their migration process. For these pioneers, their new jobs or schools, and not an established Caribbean community, provided them with spaces to meet people in their new home and to build new Caribbean social networks. “Networks can become self-perpetuating to migration because ‘each act of migration itself creates the social structure needed to sustain it,’ ” (Olwig 2007: 10, quoting Brettell 2000). These migrant pioneers play a key role in the drawing more and more Afro-Caribbeans, from other US cities, the Caribbean, and abroad, to Atlanta.

Atlanta-bound Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study used Caribbean (e.g., family, friends, and/or co-ethnics) and non-Caribbean (e.g., fraternities/sororities) networks in Atlanta to help them find jobs, find places to live, learn about events and businesses in their new home city, meet other co-ethnics in the area, and obtain whatever else they needed to adapt to their new lives in the southern metropolis. While some Afro-Caribbean migrants used networks to facilitate their migration process to Atlanta, there were others that moved to Atlanta without the aid of networks. This was particularly useful for those who did not have ethnic networks in Atlanta prior to their move like Alana. It shows that just because they are Caribbean they can only use immigrant or ethnic networks. It has been very beneficial for those who were able to use both of them at the same time. They are able to use different networks to get things accomplished.

AFRO-CARIBBEAN NETWORKS IN MIGRATION TO ATLANTA - Pt 2

Several Afro-Caribbeans that I spoke to reported using their Caribbean ethnic networks to help them to adapt to life in Atlanta, after choosing on their own to move there. Jennifer, a Jamaican transplant in her late forties who had three children and was married to a West Indian man, came to Atlanta from the Boston area, after she and her husband had visited the city and fell in love with it. While her husband was finishing graduate school in Massachusetts, she moved to Atlanta with her sons in 1999. When I asked her how she figured out where to live in Atlanta, she said that her brother-in-law lived in Stone Mountain (an eastern suburb of Atlanta with a high concentration of Afro-Caribbeans) and she and her sons had to live with him, since her husband didn’t migrate with them. By staying at her brother-in-law’s house, she was able to get to know the Atlanta area and research the best place for her family to live and for her sons (who were school-age at the time) to attend school. She eventually moved to Lawrenceville (located in the mostly white northern suburbs of Atlanta), after learning from her research that it had one of the best school systems in the Atlanta area. For Afro-Caribbean migrants, like Jennifer, having Caribbean networks in Atlanta prior to their move helped ease their transition to their new life in the southern city by providing them with places to stay, helping them find jobs, providing transportation in the car-dependent city, giving them information about the city, and giving them the space and time to learn about and adjust to their new environment.

Interestingly, I found that Caribbean networks were not only social networks that Afro-Caribbean migrants were using in their migration to Atlanta. They were also using race-based (or black) social networks. Several migrants that I interviewed reported being a member of a Black Greek Letter Organization (BGLO) and using their black sorority/fraternity network to move to and settle in Atlanta. There are historically nine Black Greek Letter Organizations (BGLOs): Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, Delta Sigma Theta sorority, Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, Omega Psi Phi fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma fraternity, Zeta Phi Beta sorority, Sigma Gamma Rho sorority, and Iota Phi Theta fraternity. These BGLOs, founded between 1906 and 1963 in response to exclusionary policies of white Greek organizations, have established chapters throughout the US—especially on the campuses of the historically black colleges and universities in the South—and the world and have been a significant part of the collegiate and post-collegiate life of many black Americans for over a century. For Afro-Caribbean migrants who have membership in these black fraternities and sororities, they were able to access this extensive black social network and receive help from either a “frat brother” or “sorority sister” of their local chapter (in the city that they left) who had connections in Atlanta, or from members of an Atlanta chapter. [1] Dwight, a thirty-five year old Kittian migrant who moved from New York with his wife in 2007, and who was a member of Omega Phi Psi Fraternity, described how one of his frat brothers (who was also his Guyanese wife’s cousin) had moved to Atlanta from New York in 1997 and helped him use the fraternity network in Atlanta to find a job. He stated, “In terms of job hunting, [my frat brother] was instrumental for me…once I got down, he put the word out with the fraternity that I was looking for a job. My first job when we got down here was working with a frat brother who was a main partner at a firm down here.” Similarly, Alana, a transplant of Barbadian descent in her mid-thirties, received help from her sorority sister in finding a place to live, when she first moved to Atlanta in 1995. After graduating college in North Carolina, she received a job offer in Atlanta and didn’t have time to look for housing before she moved there. When I asked her how she found housing, she told me that her sorority sister put her in contact with her fiancé who was living in Atlanta and he told her about an apartment complex near his home which happened to be across from her new job. She picked her apartment sight unseen based on the recommendation.

As I discussed in the preceding chapters, people have both a racial and ethnic identity, which are fluid and interchangeable based on the situation (Bashi 2007, 2013). Afro-Caribbeans are both black and Caribbean. Atlanta-bound Afro-Caribbean migrants’ use of black social networks, like those of black sororities and fraternities, does not prevent them from also accessing Caribbean networks. In their move to Atlanta, Afro-Caribbean migrants with access to both Caribbean social networks and black social networks (e.g. black fraternity/sorority networks) are able to use either networks to get their goals accomplished. In the case of Dwight, he used his Caribbean family network to find a place to live and his black fraternity network to find a job in Atlanta. 

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[1] Notable members of BGLOs are civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (Alpha Phi Alpha), First Lady Michelle Obama (honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha), and comedian-actor Bill Cosby (Omega Psi Phi), to name a few.

AFRO-CARIBBEAN NETWORKS IN MIGRATION TO ATLANTA - PT 1

A small number of the Afro-Caribbeans migrants I interviewed told me that they were recruited or invited to move to Atlanta; and, among them, all reported being recruited by a family member with whom they resided after migrating there. Beulah, a sixty-year old Jamaican-born migrant who moved to Atlanta in 1998 after living in Australia for a few years, was invited to move by her daughter who had moved to the city from New York. Similarly, Sheena, a migrant from Montserrat in her early thirties, immigrated directly to Atlanta as a teenager in 1992, after being invited by her sister. When I asked her how she came to live in Atlanta, she replied, “I came to Atlanta when I was 15…My sister and my brother moved here, after going to school at Purdue in Indiana…My sister got an internship in Atlanta and she liked it here. Then my parents bought a house there. I moved to Atlanta and finished high school here.” The willingness of many of the earlier Afro-Caribbean migrants to move to Atlanta without the support of a network in place there supports the idea that there is something distinctive about Atlanta drawing them there. In her study of West Indian nannies in Brooklyn, sociologist Tamara Mose Brown (2011) found that many of the women chose to migrate to New York because they had family already living there and with these connections found it easier to find jobs and to adjust to their new lives in the US. They found it particularly easier to settle in Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx, because these boroughs have distinct Caribbean neighborhoods, with stores and businesses that are owned by Afro-Caribbeans and sell goods that were also sold in their homelands.

Social networks play a major role in immigrants’ migration and settlement patterns (Ho 1991; Bashi 2007; Olwig 2007). “For many migrants, it is often through those networks that they obtain knowledge about possible migration destinations, the social and economic opportunities that they offer, and the best modes of access to these places” (Olwig 2007: 10). Through networks, migrants exchange economic and social resources needed to survive in their new environments. In the case of Afro-Caribbean migrants in this study, their social networks in their previous home cities and in Atlanta greatly aided their move to the new immigrant destination.

According to sociologist Vilna Bashi (2007), migration is rooted in the decision-making of social networks, which include family, friends, and compatriots. In her book Survival of the Knitted, Bashi (2007) examines immigrant social networks and shows how they function, using the case of Afro-Caribbean immigrants in New York and London. She found many Afro-Caribbean immigrants moved to New York and London because members of their immigrant network were already living there, that first selected, or recruited, them for migration to the destination and then facilitated their moving and resettling process. She describes immigrant networks as consisting of two types of members: those immigrants who have helped another migrant move and adapt to a new environment (“hubs”) and those who have received assistance from another migrant in the migration process (“spokes”). The hub is a central figure in the network because they possess social and economic resources to facilitate the migration process, and choose potential migrants, or spokes, who they believe possess character traits suitable for survival in their new environment. Networks help Caribbean immigrant newcomers to adapt to their new lives and homes, by helping them find jobs, find places to live, gain US residency or evade detection if they are not in the country legally, and other things that they need to settle into their new homes (Bashi 2007).

Why are Afro-Caribbeans Moving to Atlanta?

“L.A. proved too much for the man,

So he's leavin' the life he's come to know,

He said he's goin' back to find

Ooh, what's left of his world,

The world he left behind

Not so long ago.

He's leaving,

On that midnight train to Georgia,

And he's goin' back

To a simpler place and time.

And I'll be with him

On that midnight train to Georgia,

I'd rather live in his world

Than live without him in mine.”

-“Midnight Train to Georgia” by Gladys Knight and the Pips[1]

The excerpt above, from the song “Midnight Train to Georgia”, reflects my observations about how Atlanta, a city that had little history with mass immigration prior to 1990, became a new (major) destination for Afro-Caribbean immigrants. The song’s “significance lies in the story that it tells and the manner in which it tells it. ‘Midnight Train to Georgia’ heralds the return migration of thousands of African-Americans to the South" (Griffin 1995: 143). I became aware of African Americans “moving back” to the South while reading Carol Stack’s (1996) seminal book Call to Home: African Americans Reclaim the Rural South, which examines the movement of African Americans to the rural South, and the work by Howard Dodson and Sylviane A. Diouf (2004) for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s exhibition, In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience, which documents all black migrations to, within, and out of the US over a 400-year span (with an entire section dedicated to “return migration”).[2] African American migration to the South has increased each decade, following its start in the early 1970s. Researchers have referred to this movement as “return” migration, “reverse” migration, or the “New Great Migration” (Frey 2004), since in some cases, migrants are returning to their hometowns or those of their parents or grandparents, who left the South during the Great Migration (1910-1970).[3]

Atlanta has received a significant portion of southern-bound black migrants. During the 1990s, nearly 160,000 blacks moved to Atlanta, which some call “the Harlem of the 1990s” (Dodson and Diouf 2004). The 1990s also marked a surge in migration of Afro-Caribbeans to Atlanta, which experienced a fourfold increase in its Afro-Caribbean population (from 8,342 to 35,308). Once I learned this, I believed that the Afro-Caribbeans were following African Americans to the South, like Gladys Knight followed her lover in the song. For this reason, I began this study with the intention of exploring the relationship/connection between the two southern-bound black migrations to Atlanta, and decidedly titled my dissertation “On the Midnight Train to Georgia: Afro-Caribbeans and the New Great Migration.”

But I was mistaken. Once in the field, I soon realized that the Afro-Caribbeans that I talked to did not relate their movement to Atlanta to return migration or to African Americans’ concentrated movement to Atlanta. Their decisions to migrate to the southern city, though varied, are tied to/shaped by their status as black on the one hand and immigrants on the other—two socially distinct groups in the US (Mederios Kent 2007). Researchers have shown how being both black and immigrant has significantly influenced, in various ways, the Afro-Caribbean experience in the US—adaptation to American life, understandings of race, identification, and residential patterns, among other things.

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[1] Lyrics taken from www.lyricsdepot.com.

[2] See website for Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Presents In Motion: The African-American Migration Experience (http://www.inmotionaame.org/home.cfm).

[3] The Great Migration was the movement of over 6 million African Americans from the South to the North, West, and Midwest between 1910 and 1970, contributing to the development of major black communities in Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, New York (namely Harlem), and Los Angeles, and to almost half of the black population in the US residing outside of the South. It’s debatable whether if black southern-bound migration should be called return migration, since some scholars count “return” differently. In the works of Stewart Tolnay (2004) and William Falk, Larry Hunt, and Matthew Hunt (2004), they count “return” as migrants who return to their home state, not necessarily their hometowns. This would include, for example, a person who grew up in rural Georgia “returning” to Atlanta, which I argue is different than the migrants in Carol Stack’s (1996) work who returned to their hometowns.