Lunch Hour

I haven't been to the Smithsonian in over a fortnight, but I decided to return to American History today, where I finished the 2nd Floor West Wing. The exhibit was called "Field to Factory", and documented the migration of 'Afro-American' workers and families from the rural South to the industrial North from 1915-1940. A few noteworthies:

• Very few patrons at the crowded museum viewed the exhibit; it was a ghost town when I first stepped. This is in contrast to other "black" exhibits, such as the new one on Brown v. Board of Ed.
• The exhibit was neither here nor there on depth. It boasted neither the statistics, graphs, and maps to make it a scholarly exhibit nor the continuing personal stories that can draw an outsider into the emotions of the experience. It struck me rather like a freshman's sociology paper.
• The experience of blacks was surprisingly reminiscent of that of Europeans during roughly the same period. Whether moving to large European cities or to the United States, many poor Europeans had socioeconomic backgrounds (serfs and peasants) very similar to American sharecroppers. Standing in sharp relief is the story of the 'old Yankees', non-aristocratic landowners who populated the North and Midwest, creating a society based on different values and experiences than the more stratified cultures of Europe and the American South.