Gabrielle Peterson
PhD ’23
The purpose of this research is to study Black migration to and integration of Ann Arbor, Michigan schools and neighborhoods. I am conducting case studies of the people and institutions involved in and/or resistant to the process of structural integration. The case studies draw from archival materials, oral history, and interview data in order to evaluate the actors in this process. Many historians and social scientists focus on major cities like Detroit in order to understand social change universally but it is more evocative to study a place people move to specifically for the quality of schools and neighborhoods. The college town of Ann Arbor is the best site in order to contextualize changes and responses to those changes in places like Charlottesville and Ferguson which received more media
attention. These violent outbursts of race relations differ little from the Black/White tensions as Ann Arbor citizens and city officials engaged in the process of integration over 50 years ago. This research serves the Black community who has worked tirelessly to publish books about, and contribute to their Black historical preservation efforts. This work is significant not only for those aforementioned community members, but also at University of
Michigan considering the discussions of diversity and inclusion on campus. This is unique because it utilizes sociological and historical methods in order to recount the story of integration at a very local level, drawing from resources on campus and in the neighborhood.
Library Mentor: Hailey Mooney