Doctoral Student Secures Historic District Designation for Rapp Road’s Black Community
By Paul Alan Rosen

From left to right, Girley May Ferguson, Emma Dickson, Lucy Johnson, and UAlbany student Jennifer Lemak in Shubuta, Miss. Ferguson and Dickson are Rapp Road residents. Johnson stayed in Mississippi even though all of her brothers moved to Albany with Elder Parson.

A UAlbany student has succeeded in securing State Historic District designation for the Rapp Road African-American community in the Pine Bush. According to Professor of History Ivan Steen, this is the first culturally significant minority district to be so named. In January, the community won the national designation.

Jennifer Lemak, 28, a Ph.D. student in the Department of History, has been investigating the historical significance of the Rapp Road Community since the spring of 2000, when she was finishing her master’s in public history at UAlbany. The community is now the subject of her doctoral dissertation. She traveled to Shubuta, Miss., with two community members in November 2002 to conduct oral history interviews with people who did not migrate to Albany.

Originally from Elmira, N.Y., Lemak became interested in history at an early age because of her father, a high school history teacher.

Her recent studies have come about as a result of a seminar taught by professors Steen and Robert Dykstra. A research requirement for the class led Lemak to history curator Wes Balla, whom she worked with at the Albany Institute of History and Art; Balla suggested Lemak study the Rapp Road Community.

Since that time, Lemak has become deeply involved in that community. She completed an application for the New York State Historic Register that was presented to the New York State Preservation Society and passed in September 2002. Not only did Lemak succeed in convincing New York State of the significance of the Rapp Road Community; this area also received wider recognition after being voted onto the National Historic Register in January. A Woodrow Wilson Practicum Grant provided financial support for Lemak’s efforts.

Top photo: 54 Rapp Road was Butler Corley’s house. Bottom photo : Aunt Resse’s house in Shubuta. She had family members move to Rapp Road. Jennifer Lemak chose these photos to show the similarity of the houses and areas. Photos, courtesy of Jennifer Lemak.

Pastor Louis W. Parson of Shubuta, Miss., founded the Rapp Road Com-munity. Shortly after Parson moved to Albany in 1927, he established his own church (a branch of the First Church of God in Christ), which was originally located at 40 Franklin St. He began recruiting families from his hometown to join him in Albany. Albany’s main selling points were the opportunity for “higher wages,” and “the North’s reputation of racial equality,” according to Lemak.

Many families did join Parson but could not adjust to living in an urban environment on the south side of Albany. These families were used to rural surroundings and the sharecropping life back in Mississippi. Feeling out of place, some of the families returned to Shubuta. Parson knew he must act if he wished to keep his community in the North. In the significance statement Lemak wrote for the New York State Historic Register application, she noted, “On May 2, 1930, Louis Parson and William Toliver purchased a 14-acre tract of land from Charles Smith.” Another tract was also purchased on March 30, 1933. “This land was located in the western extension of the City of Albany in the Pine Bush.” Parson sold land exclusively to members of his church.

“Between 1942 and 1963, 23 African-American families bought tracts of land from Parson’s original land purchases. In 2001, 17 of the original families, including three first-generation residents, still lived on Rapp Road.

“Parson was repeatedly told by Albany authorities to stop bringing blacks to the area who did not have money, jobs, or houses. Not only did Parson continue bringing people to Albany until his death on Jan. 11, 1940,” but because most of these families were sharecroppers and indebted to their landlords, “it was necessary for Parson to pick migrants up on Saturday nights [in Shubuta],” and drive them all the way to Albany, Lemak wrote.

“They would not be missed until Monday morning because landlords knew most [of the black families] attended church all day on Sunday. Parson was helping these people escape from their bonds of debt, albeit in an illegal manner,” Lemak’s paper stated.

Today there is still a strong connection between the two communities. In fact, “Each year since 1957, the Rapp Road [African-American] Community celebrates at a giant family reunion held on Rapp Road, and several members of the community maintain ties with family and friends who still live in Mississippi. Every other year a ‘homecoming’ reunion is celebrated in Shubuta, Miss., for those who moved away. Rapp Road members are usually present at the event,” she wrote.

Not only are Rapp Road members usually present, but Lemak was invited to join them in November 2002. She traveled to Shubuta on a grant from the Initiatives For Women program with two other Rapp Road residents and had a chance to interview members of that community about their ties to Albany.

Lemak is expected to complete her Ph.D. by May 2004 and plans to keep in close contact with the residents of the Rapp Road Community.

So, the next time you plan to cut through that small residential area called Rapp Road on your way to Crossgates Mall, think about the history you are traversing. This is a neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places, and if you listen hard enough, you just might hear Louis W. Parson saying, “Thanks, Jennifer,” as the contemporary residents of this community are doing today.

SPH Students Win Epidemiology Awards
By Lisa James Goldsberry
Five School of Public Health students received awards for noteworthy epidemiology research or papers at the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) 130th Annual Meeting and Exposition, held recently in Philadelphia, Pa. The theme of the conference was “Putting the Public Back into Public Health.”

Ping Du, a Ph.D. student, received an award for his paper, “Comparability on knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors between STD clinic clients and high-risk individuals in community.” Ph.D. student Eve M. Waltermaurer was honored for her paper, “Issues in estimating the prevalence of intimate partner violence: the association between abuse status and participation in research conducted in the home.”

Gary Brooks, a Dr.P.H. student, won the James Zimmer New Investigator Research award for “Impact of diabetes on activities of daily living in long-term care.” Motao Zhu, a Ph.D. student, received an award for “Impact of maternal birthplace on major congenital malformations in New York Hispanics,” and Trang Nguyen won in the Medical Care section for “Variation in hospital death rates: A surprising finding.”

Dr. Robert McKeown, chair of the APHA epidemiology section, said “The public health challenges of the 21st century are wide ranging, including enhancing well-being across the life span in an aging population, responding to newly emerging infectious diseases, and preparing for disasters and terrorist attacks. Epidemiologists are an essential part of the core public health workforce that will enable us to address these challenges.” The epidemiology section is the second largest section of the organization.

UAlbany Presents Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award
By Heidi Weber

Robert Higgins, chairman and CEO of Trans World Entertainment Corp./ Photo, courtesy of Trans World Entertainment.

The University at Albany is recognizing Robert Higgins, the chairman and chief executive officer of Trans World Entertainment Corp., as the region’s entrepreneur of the year.

President Karen R. Hitchcock was expected to present the 2003 Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award at the Tech Valley Marketing Symposium, the educational forum co-sponsored by the University’s Council for Economic Outreach and the Capital Region chapter of the American Marketing Association today at noon at the Desmond Hotel & Conference Center.

The award recognizes the extraordinary accomplishments of an individual who has contributed to the University, region, and economy by demonstrating the spirit and personal drive of the entrepreneur.

Higgins founded Trans World Entertainment under the name “Trans World Music Corp.” as a music wholesaler in Albany in 1972. Trans World opened its first retail store in 1973. After expanding its wholesale and retail operations, the company sold its wholesale business to concentrate on an aggressive expansion of its retail operation. The company went public in 1986 (NASDAQ:TWMC) with 200 stores and annual sales of $130,000.

Today, the company, the largest specialty retailer of prerecorded music products in the United States, operates nearly 900 stores in 45 states, the District of Columbia, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico, with annual sales of $1.3 billion. The company operates retail stores in two divisions: mall and free standing. Mall stores operate under two brands, FYE (For Your Entertainment) and Saturday Matinee. FYE represents the continued evolution of the company from music stores to entertainment stores, with a wide selection of product offerings, including DVDs and video games. Freestanding stores include Coconuts Music and Movies, Strawberries, and Spec’s.

In addition to his responsibilities at Trans World, Higgins is a former chairman and current board member of the Executive Committee at Albany Medical Center, Northeastern New York’s only academic health sciences center. He serves on the Saratoga Performing Arts Center Board of Directors, which develops and promotes an appreciation for and understanding of the performing arts among members of the community at large.

Past recipients of the Excellence in Entrepreneurship honor include CardioMag CEO Carl Rosner, CommerceHub CEO Frank Poore, and Larry Davis, founder of Tech Valley Communications.

UAlbany’s Council for Economic Outreach contributes to the Capital Region’s economic well being by promoting partnership opportunities among the University, the business community, and governmental agencies. The group comprises local business people and other private citizens.

Census 2000: Afro-Caribbean and African Populations on the Rise
By Lisa James Goldsberry

John Logan, director of the Lewis Mumford Center. Photo by Mark Schmidt.

The number of black Americans with roots in the sub-Saharan countries of Africa more than doubled during the 1990s, and those with Afro-Caribbean roots increased by more than 60 percent, according to a new report by the University at Albany’s Lewis Mumford Center for Urban and Regional Research.

The report, “Black Diversity in Metropolitan America,” also shows that the newcomers -- Afro-Caribbeans and Africans -- have many advantages compared to African-Americans. Members of these growing black populations tend to be better educated, have higher incomes, and typically live in neighborhoods with a higher socioeconomic standing. Africans’ average education level is higher than that of whites or Asians.

“We are used to thinking in broader racial and ethnic categories, especially when we think of black Americans,” said center director John Logan. “But we may be moving into an era where distinctions based on national origins become more visible, and we will think of our nation as one of many minorities.”

Like African-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans and Africans are highly segregated from whites. “However, this does not mean that America’s black populations share the same neighborhoods,” Logan points out. “Segregation among black ethnic groups reflects important social differences between them.”

Other highlights of the report:

For the full report, visit “Black Diversity in Metropolitan America” at http://mumford1.dyndns.org/cen2000/report.html.

Mumford Center Sponsors Genealogy Challenge
By Merci Miglino
The University’s Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research has announced the Genealogy Challenge, a contest aimed at bolstering the center’s project, “Twenty Years in New Yorkers’ Lives: 1900 to 1920.”

Directed by John R. Logan, the center is currently tracing a sample of individuals from 1920 back to 1900 to better understand how members of different ethnic groups were integrated into jobs and neighborhoods in New York City at the turn of the last century. This is the largest study ever conducted of how people’s lives changed during that period.

Logan began with a sample of several thousand people whose individual and household characteristics were found in the 1920 census. All people in his sample lived in New York City in 1920 and were somewhere in the United States in 1900, although not necessarily in New York City. Logan said, “Genealogists are expert at tracking a family back several generations, and I thought we could use the same methods to find a large sample of people in the manuscripts of the 1900 U.S. Census.” In fact, the center has already found more than 1,500 individuals from the 1920 sample in the 1900 Census.

The idea of a contest was born of necessity, since the remaining cases are becoming harder to trace. The Genealogy Challenge allows anyone in the country to become part of this research project through the Internet. The contest is open to both amateur and professional genealogists.

“If you’d like to test your skills while supporting a worthy project and earn yourself some recognition and our Mumford Challenge Cup, we invite you to take the Mumford Genealogy Challenge,” said Logan.

To learn more about entering the challenge and the chance to earn both recognition and prizes, visit the Mumford Center Web site at www.albany.edu/mumford/genealogy. For more information, e-mail Mumford@albany.edu or call (518) 442-2579, (518) 229-4403 (cell).

Recognized as one of the great urbanists of the 20th century, Lewis Mumford endorsed the creation of the Lewis Mumford Center for Comparative Urban and Regional Research in 1988. Under the leadership of Logan, the center currently focuses on four key initiatives: 1) Global Neighborhoods, 2) the Urban Historical Initiative, 3) the China Urban Research Network, and 4) the Hudson-Mohawk Regional Workshop. Each of these projects examines the impact of global changes on the U.S. metropolis and civil society; probes the 19th- and early-20th century roots of present-day cities and suburbs; and addresses urban change in other parts of the world, mostly notably China.