Southern Life, Northern City: The History of Albany's Rapp Road Community (review)

Jennifer Lemak has created a detailed account of Reverend Louis W. Parson's recruitment of his African American Pentecostal congregation from Shubuta, Mississippi, to Albany, New York, in the 1920s and 1930s. Many African Americans were promised a new life in the north, with a less hostile white majority. Their travels north did provide a decrease in some forms of racism; however, Albany offered its own forms of discrimination. Lemak details many of Parson's trips to the South to recruit people to his northern home, often transporting the migrants himself. Though the north promised a better life, challenges still existed within this new environment.

Lemak relies primarily on self-conducted oral histories to detail the migrants' transitions from a southern life to a northern city. Once in Albany, many migrants had difficulty finding homes or office spaces to rent; purchasing a home was an even greater challenge. The homes that were available often left the congregation conflicted. Parson did everything in his power to keep his congregation on a positive economic and spiritual path. For instance, he invested in the future of Rapp Road by purchasing property on the edge of town, which he saw as his best alternative for members of his church to minimize the challenges of city life. All in all, his efforts proved highly successful in developing a unique community that has lived through the test of time.

Even with the dangers of rural development and renewal, this community continued to exist and thrive. We are fortunate this unique community is being preserved through Lemak's documentation. Her detailed account of the history of the Rapp Road community is an excellent integration of oral histories with other sources such as government documents, manuscripts, newspapers, books, and articles. She allows the block quotes of oral histories to speak for themselves. These are the oral histories she collected, which are either located in her private collection or at the Albany Institute of History and Art. When she uses block quotes from nonoral sources, however, she introduces and presents the information but never integrates it into the overall work. Although they form a small part of her book, and even though the information is relevant, she does not do much to connect these quotes to the overall theme. The information, though useful, may have better served the reader in a different format, such as paraphrases or possibly smaller quotes.

Lemak's appendices were helpful by continuing her ongoing comparison of Shubuta and Albany. The use of photographs of both communities was a pleasant addition to the book, which reinforced the similarities of the two homes of the residents of Rapp Road. I also found the segments from oral histories, which dealt specifically with the housing conditions, a reminder of why oral histories are such a useful tool. A phrase of deplorable conditions does not have the same power as a narrator saying from experience, "Toilet outside and out of order. Landlord will not fix. Ceiling down. Doors don't shut. Kitchen always cold" (138).

Lemak discusses the details and challenges of entering a tight knit community and asking questions. Certain problems arise when entering a society where you are an obvious nonmember. Differences in race, religion, and economic class were only a few issues that were a challenge for Lemak as she attempted to conduct an oral history project in Rapp Road. Many people, especially young scholars like Lemak, would not take on the task of entering a society that closes itself off to outsiders, mainly for self-preservation. Lemak's work should be viewed as an inspiration for other oral historians to leave their comfort zones and start interviewing beyond their own boundaries. The ending chapters share the account of the evolution of her work, from the preservation of the oral histories to the preservation of a community. She may have begun this project...