Brown, Danielle. “Kirksville R-III Adapts in Order to Better Integrate Congolese Students.” Kirksville Daily Express, 14 December 2015. ? http://www.kirksvilledailyexpress.com/article/20151212/NEWS/151219704

After completing a close read of the above article, I began to think more of not just the interpersonal and individual obstacles presented to immigrants, but of roadblocks (so to speak) on the institutional level. The main focus of this article is on the school system itself and the changes it has had to make to better accommodate the needs of the Congolese immigrant children and their families. There is, after all, only one ESOL teacher for the entire district, which isn’t conducive for the rapid language acquisition needed in order to participate fully in class.

Outside of the institution of the school, the article also mentioned how the role of government can really impact the immigration experience–even after people are granted visas. For example, government funding directly affects school programs (and other programs) like ESL. The article describes how requests for aid usually don’t reach the school district until a year or a year and a half later, so they are constantly behind and trying to play catch-up.

There is no question that institutional bodies in the United States affect immigrants to this country, but we must also consider institutional factors in the country from which they are immigrating. These can point to a “why” in terms of the migration, or at the very least part of the answer to that question. In the article, Celeste Yampanya explains that in the Congo, the area where they lived was not well off economically, and schooling was very expensive. It would be interesting to explore the historical and political context behind this to help further explain the driving factors for migration.

This is relevant not only to the project Maggie and I are working on, but to the rest of our classmates’ projects as well. Structural systems in place in our country have an impact on everyone, though that impact might look different in different cultural areas. By taking into consideration these macro scale forces on the migration process, we might be able to cultivate a deeper understanding of the process and experience.

In our time spent searching for primary and secondary sources to use in our research, I have learned that there are few secondary sources concerning the migration of Congolese people to Kirksville. This, of course, makes sense for the temporal scale within which we are working. This migration has only occurred within the past 5 or so years, so there hasn’t been a heavy focus on documenting their experiences.

That’s where we come in.

In addition to looking over previous student research projects for more information, I think it would be a good idea to contact the Truman faculty members who have helped integrate the Congolese people into the community as well as the Kirksville school district teachers and anyone else who might have experience working with them. And, of course, we plan to conduct interviews with the Congolese people as well in order to transcribe their firsthand experiences of moving to Kirksville and living here.

Something interesting to note: I found this map of Congolese refugee resettlement patterns that shows which states have the highest Congolese population (at least, in 2013). While reading a KTVO article, I noticed that Richard Yampana, a Congolese immigrant, said he had lived in Illinois and Indiana—where there was already an established Congolese population—before moving to Kirksville. I am excited to explore the connections between Kirksville’s Congolese population and other populations around the country and how this affects their definitions of community.

 

You can find our primary source bibliography here.

And our secondary source bibliography here.

The inception of a research project lies in a question waiting to be answered, a problem waiting to be solved. Often times, the research interests of one person don’t directly align with others’. Fortunate for our research endeavors, Maggie and I had the same idea of what we wanted to study in terms of migration to Kirksville. We are both interested in conducting interviews with the Congolese population in Adair County in order to gain some insight on how community is created in a new environment and how people adapt to their surroundings.

Though we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to study, we still wanted to look into the archival records to find out more about the history of Kirksville and Adair County before committing to our topic. As mentioned in some of the articles we read in class, there was minimal information on African American history (though the Adair County Historical Society has a web page and an archival folder dedicated to the subject), and there wasn’t much on Native American History either.

In the Special Collections Department, we had several staff members assist us in our research, and they found sources that indicated many of the first settlers in Adair County came from Tennessee, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. They were also able to guide us to information on the German-established colony of Ninevah as well as census records detailing the influx of immigrants to Novinger (a mining town west of Kirksville) in the early 1900s.

While the stories of Ninevah and Novinger’s inhabitants through time would no doubt be interesting to follow, Maggie and I have remained firm in our decision to study the Congolese immigrant population in Kirksville, even though the temporal scope is not as large. Maggie has already conducted interviews with some of the members of the community, and I look forward to joining her and adding to the body of established work. I believe that compiling oral histories early on in the migration will be beneficial to anyone wanting to learn more about Adair County’s history along with future Congolese generations curious about their origins in the United States.

Now, to brush up on my French.

Ready to explore the archival records and other resources concerning migration to Kirksville, I left my house this morning to meet my partner, Maggie, at Pickler Memorial Library for our Research Assistance Program (RAP) session. Eager to speak directly with a librarian who is a specialist in history and sociology who could provide us with some valuable resources, we arrived to find that our session would have to be rescheduled, because this particular had to leave work to deal with an emergency.

C’est la vie.

Luckily, another librarian was there, and she provided us with some good resources to kick off some research. She pointed out local history and genealogy databases on Truman’s library server as well as census records that we could look through to identify patterns of migration in that way. We concluded our impromptu yet informative meeting by deciding to check the Special Collections section of Pickler to see if we could uncover any information there.

Upon arriving at the Special Collections area, I was immediately informed that the head librarian there was off to a webinar and wouldn’t be back until later. I left my name, email, and search query (“Migration to Kirksville throughout history. Any groups at any point in time”), feeling slightly guilty for the vague request but eager to see what they might find.

Another resource we have available at our disposal is Adair County Historical Society, though the hours of operation are working against us a bit. The museum, where I have worked for the past two years as an archival assistant, is only open Wednesdays through Fridays from 1:00-4:00pm. For Maggie and I, our class schedules aren’t exactly compatible with this small window of time, but we are certainly going to stop by at some point soon.

All in all, we have plenty of resources available to us, and I am excited to begin delving into Kirksville’s past. As the archival assistant for the ACHS, I have spent a significant amount of time poring over old newspaper clippings and photos that the society has collected. I can’t wait to put my interests towards the study of migration here and to then share our findings with anyone who desires to learn.

Welcome to Cultural Crossroads. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!