Asserting a black vision of race and place: Florida A&M University’s homecoming as an affirmative, transgressive claim of place

• Published in: Geoforum 2020-05, Vol.111, p.62-72
• Main Author: Allen, Douglas L.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Bands; Black geographies; Black people; Cities; Dehumanization; Durability; Empirical analysis; Geography; Happiness; HBCU; Neighborhoods; Parade; Place-making; Race; Racial identity; Reconfiguration; Students; Suffering; Urban
• ISSN: 0016-7185; 1872-9398
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.03.007

•Black joy/celebration holds power to reshape urban socio-spatial relations.•Black geographies are transgressive acts in a world that invisibilizes/marginalizes Black lives.•Place-making and Black geographies are complimentary approaches for studying race and place.•Black joy/celebration offers scholars sites of inquiry that highlight affirmative resistance. Black geographies and place-making provide scholars with complementary approaches for uncovering/recovering Black senses of place. Utilizing these approaches, I analyze Florida A&M University’s (FAMU) homecoming as a temporary reconfiguration of place in Tallahassee. I discuss the role of students in the Marching 100, FAMU’s nationally acclaimed band, in reconfiguring the city and the implications of this for these students. Using empirics gathered from 33 in-depth interviews and over 750 h of observation of Marching 100 practices and performances, I argue that FAMU’s homecoming temporarily reconfigures Tallahassee as FAMU’s town. The FAMU homecoming parade asserts FAMU’s presence and belonging within the city, provides opportunities to experience more of the city for FAMU students, and contributes to the (dis)connection of FAMU from the historically Black neighborhood of Frenchtown within the city. It provides an empirical case of a transgressive claim of place that does not seek durable, permanent changes within the city and illustrates that Black joy/celebration has the power to assert presence and reshape urban socio-spatial relations. Such productions of Black geographies are important place-making acts that resist and disrupt socio-spatial relations built upon the erasure and dehumanization of Blackness and Black lives. This article responds to calls within Black geographies literature to focus on Black life rather than Black suffering/struggle and engages with the precarity and durability of Black place-making claims.