How can one story of a Black family, a community and their relationship to home develop our understanding of lived experience in segregated North Omaha?

In 1952, author and scholar Valandra’s grandparents bought a two-story white house on the corner of Pratt Street and 28th Street in North Omaha, migrating from rural Arkansas. Through the sharing of the author’s lived experience and intergenerational resident interviews, Black Family Enterprise explores what it was like to grow up in a segregated working-class Black community.

Part oral history, part urban history, part ethnography of a family and community, this first-person account illustrates the common and unique ways residents claim space and place in defining their lives, community, and sustaining their histories, culture, and traditions. These stories of Black urban placemaking address themes of mutual aid, safety, security, structural inequality and injustice.

A series of personal reflections on intergenerational resistance, resilience, and determination, this book is ideal reading for students of Black Studies, African American Studies, Anthropology, Cultural History, Migration Studies, Urban Studies, American Studies, and Social Work.

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Learning objectives
• Introduction
  • Motivation
  • Methodology
• PART I History
  • Chapter 1 Southern roots and migration North
  • Chapter 2 History of North Omaha
• PART II Community pillars
  • Chapter 3 The Williams Residential Care Home
  • Chapter 4 The Tarver family
  • Chapter 5 Reverend T. Michael Williams
  • Chapter 6 Linda Hill
• PART III Neighborhood, inheritance, and legacy
  • Chapter 7 History of the North Freeway and city planning
  • Chapter 8 Berdine Hall Williams
• Conclusion
• Suggested discussion topics
• References
• Further reading
• Index

Valandra BS, MBA, MSW, PhD is a jointly appointed Associate Professor in the School of Social Work and African and African American Studies at the University of Arkansas – Fayetteville.

Author blog post: Ancestral Voices: Listening to My Grandmothers. A look at the "intergenerational bridge" and how the author's grandparents "overcame insurmountable obstacles daily and showed our families and communities, in word and deed, how to defy the white grip of exploitation and domination of our minds, bodies, and spirits to maintain our freedom and find joy despite living in the wake."