Getting Free, Spatially

Abstract:In this introduction to the special issue of Southern Cultures on Black Geographies, Danielle Purifoy reflects on her family’s spatial trajectory from the Great Migration of the mid-twentieth century to her own upbringing in Durham, North Carolina, to demonstrate the spatial liberation strategies of Afro-diasporic peoples that flow through, away, and toward the global South. Black geographies interrupt dominant geographic thought predicated on colonialism, slavery, and marginalization, and offer alternative ways to imagine the world. Global southern spaces have always been sites of freedom experiments against oppression and toward more livable worlds. This issue of Southern Cultures and its online complement offer stories, meditations, and inquiries about the myriad spatial practices of Black liberation.