Reframing the Narrative: Llana Barber on Centering Blackness in Immigration History

Llana Barber and project collaborators at a workshop meeting with IHRC

For too long, American immigration history has filtered the Black experience and perspective through a narrow lens. Llana Barber and her collaborators are ready to shatter that lens. 

Barber is the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair of Immigration History, director of the Immigration History Research Center, and an associate professor in the Department of History.

She is co-editing a book that aims to center and amplify Black narratives regarding immigration. This work seeks to reframe and redefine the marginalized histories of Black immigrants, showing how anti-Black racism is built into US immigration policies.

This is how Barber describes the project and its impact in her own words.

The Project in the Works

My current scholarship focuses on the history of Black migration, particularly Black immigration to the United States and within the Caribbean. After I published an article tracing the history of anti-Black racism in US immigration restrictions, I was approached by a colleague to co-edit a volume on Black immigration history. 

Willie Mack, assistant professor of Black Studies at the University of Missouri, and I are now co-editing a book titled Dark Waters: Centering Black Experiences in U.S. Immigration History (forthcoming). The book explores the history of immigration and citizenship in the United States by centering Black immigrant and Black American experiences and perspectives. 

Black experiences have long been marginalized within US immigration historiography, and this book aims to fill that longstanding lacuna. In addition, centering Black experiences shifts some of the major standard narratives of US immigration historiography, compelling scholars to reckon with the role that anti-Black racism has played in shaping US immigration policy since the colonial era. 

Immigration history is vibrantly attuned to race and ethnicity. Scholars have given in-depth attention to the myriad ways in which race and ethnicity have shaped both migrant experiences and immigration policy. And yet, within this rich field, Black immigrants are nearly absent. This volume will examine the long history of Black immigration to the US, as well as Black experiences of nativism, exclusion, controlled mobility, and precarious citizenship.

The edited volume will serve to define the emerging field of Black Immigration History. Dark Waters is currently under contract with the University of North Carolina Press with an anticipated publication date in 2027.

Community, Support & Teamwork

The Imagine Fund grant allowed me to host a workshop with CLA's Immigration History Research Center, bringing together all the contributors to the edited volume. During the day-long workshop, fifteen scholars convened to discuss their chapters-in-progress, receive and offer feedback, and reflect on the nascent field of Black immigration history. University of Minnesota faculty and graduate students interested in Black studies and migration studies attended to observe and connect with the visiting scholars. 

Draft chapters were circulated in advance, and participants had a lively discussion. Authors received helpful feedback, and editors identified key themes and interventions that will be addressed in the book’s introduction and structure. In addition, scholars who have been advancing studies of Black immigration history in relative isolation were able to come together, share ideas and inspiration, and build a supportive intellectual community to support this important work.

Impact: The Personal & the Broad

Currently, no edited volumes exist that broadly consider Black experiences in US immigration history, so my co-editor and I expect Dark Waters to be a field-defining book. The volume will interrogate how nativism works to build restrictive and punitive anti-immigration laws and rhetoric; how anti-Black racism intersects with nativism; and the experience of Black immigrants and Black Americans within those interlocking systems. 

I hope that this project will bring Black immigrant experiences firmly into the study of migration and help advance scholarly and public understandings that the social categories of Black and immigrant are not mutually exclusive. I believe this work has the potential to permanently reshape the fundamental narratives of immigration historiography to incorporate Black immigrant experiences and recognize the central role that anti-Black racism has played in shaping US nativism and restriction.

The ability to host this workshop has allowed me to build mutually supportive relationships with scholars in the field from across the country. Ideally, this book will advance the contributors' work by concretizing the field of Black Immigration History and underscoring its intellectual significance.

The contributors are revising their chapters in response to the feedback they received in the workshop, and we hope to send the complete manuscript to the press for review in August 2026.

This story was edited by Deborah Sventek, an undergraduate student in CLA.