Identity, Voice, & Community among New African Immigrants to Kansas January 2005 - March 2006

Project Staff:


John M. Janzen, Project Director, Professor of Anthropology, KU, Director, KASC;
Khalid Elhassan, Project co-director, Program Coordinator, KASC;
Melissa Filippi-Franz, Project co-director, Interviewer, PhD Student, Anthropology, KU.
Garth Myers, Project writer; Associate Director KASC, Professor of Geography & African & African American Studies

* If you are interested in obtaining a video copy of "New African Immigrants to Kansas," please contact the KASC main office at 785-864-3745

Final Report for Project [.pdf]

Interviews [.pdf]

"Identity, voice, and community among new African immigrants to Kansas" highlights the emergence in metropolitan Kansas of multiple and unique African communities--from Somalia, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Zanzibar, and elsewhere. Following up on a fall 2004 seminar, which included a research presentation by Ken Lohrentz, former KU Africana Bibliographer, and Garth Myers' paper "African Immigrants in the Land of Oz." presented at a Hall Humanities Center Seminar, this project provides the opportunity for leaders and members of these communities to share with their new neighbors their stories and for these neighbors to become better acquainted with the newcomers and their distinctive backgrounds.

Identity. Questions arise such as: who are we, now that we have left our old home and live in a new place? What do the new African immigrants have in common with the earlier Africa immigrants? Or, is the experience similar to other immigrants who came voluntarily? How do the new immigrants react to, being categorized as "African-American?" What is the relationship of Africans to African-American? And other Americans?

Voice. How is the experience of leaving, migrating, arriving and getting settled, told? Who tells it? How is memory built? How is collective memory created in story? Are these stories a part of an on-going African cultural heritage? Do these stories resemble earlier African-Somali, Sudanese, Ethiopian, Zanzibari, etc-forms of storytelling in the literature of oral tradition? To what extent are dress, music, dance, and religion features of finding voice? What happens where memories deal with traumatic experiences of civil war, genocide, forced flight, and loss of family? How do these stories become part of an American story?

Community. Finally, there are new stories of arrival, strangeness, misunderstandings, and also positive experiences, of mutual assistance, of "making it" in America. What are the ways of relating to the new neighbors and the larger American society that emerge? Do job and work offer important associations? How do the new immigrants keep in touch with their relatives, friends, neighbors, and home communities? Are these experiences of building community and maintaining networks enhanced or compromised by the electronic media of the telephone, email, and internet?

This project highlights the presence in Kansas of the more than 500,000 African-born individuals residing in the U.S. After the Northeast, the Midwest represents the second highest density. In the media and scant scholarship on the African immigrant, reference is usually made to centers such as the Somalis of Columbus, Ohio, the Nuer of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, or the Dinka of Omaha, Nebraska. This project explores why Africans have chosen Kansas as their new home. The telling of stories, listening to voices, and studying communities will contribute to the richness of the Kansas experience and to Kansas history. It will help Kansans see themselves as part of a modern global community.

The project will have three phases:

Research (Spring to early Fall 2005): Studies will be devoted to interviewing individuals and small groups, and collecting stories of representatives from several communities, about their reasons for leaving home, the circumstances of departure, and the grounds for their locating, and learning to live, in Kansas.

Public Programs (Winter, 2005-6): At public programs in Lawrence (March 27, 2006, 7:00 P.M., Public Library) and Kansas City, MO( May 17:00 P.M. at the Jewish Vocational Services 1608 Baltimore) these stories will be aired and discussed by the participants and historian David Katzman, author on migration and the American experience and theater scholar Omofolabo Ajayi, who has studied African and American social history and cultural expression.

Media presentation and archival documentation represent the third phase of the project (Spring, 2006). Digital audio and visual documentation will be brought together for a one-hour videofilm suitable for public television. Topeka (KTWU) and Kansas City (KCPT) stations have agreed to consider airing this program. Interviews will be selectively published by the Center in desktop form and on-line on the KASC website. Original film and interview materials will be deposited in the Kansas Collection of the Kansas University Spencer Research Library.


Who are the new African immigrants?

The project partners are the leaders of African immigrant groups or communities and individuals who participated in the Fall 2004 African Studies Seminar. They represent both their communities and work in agencies that are related to their groups as immigrants. Partners include:

The Kansas African Studies Center Coordinates and develops the interdisciplinary interests of Africanist, and promotes the study and understanding of Africa in the university, the region, and beyond.

This project is part of the " We the People" Ethnic Heritage Initiative. The project's principal funding is provided by the Kansas Humanities Council, a nonprofit cultural organization promoting understanding of the history, traditions, and ideas that shape our lives and build community.