Abstract
Conceptualizing Miami as the “Hemispheric South” captures the hemispheric collision of peoples, practices, and prejudices that have transformed understandings of whiteness, Blackness, Latinx and power in this city. The essay argues that Black migrants are foundational to Miami’s hemispheric history. Using the life writings of Black academics, it demonstrates that a hemispheric angle on Miami revises understandings of U.S. migration, Civil Rights, and the sounds of Blackness. The city speaks in different grammars of Blackness, thereby rendering more layers of the Black experience legible, usable, and cautionary. Miami’s Black histories speak to our present moment where global migration is rapidly becoming the defining issue of the era. Because Miami’s history presaged a wider set of civil rights reversals for Black Americans, the city’s Black history provides a new lens on familiar questions of race and incorporation thus enabling us to see a different narrative arc of the United States. Reframing Miami in terms of Black hemispheric movement reorients key debates in Black Studies, Caribbean Studies, American Studies around race, migration, whiteness, and civil rights.