Carol Stack, prize-winning author of Call to Home: African Americans Reclaim the Rural South, has been following for more than twenty years the 5000,000-person-strong return migration of African Americans to the rural South. In this MillerComm lecture, she examines the efforts of returning migrants to revitalize the New South against considerable political, economic, and ideological odds.

Stack describes the dangers that low-income families face as the federal government reorganizes social programs into block grants–lump sums given to the state for the general purpose of helping the poor. Arguing that these block grants are headed in the wrong direction, she examines the political implications of their local control, especially in rural regions of the Southeast.

Cosponsored by: School of Social Work, Department of Anthropology, Department of Educational Policy Studies, Department of English, Department of Geography, Department of History, Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, Afro-American Studies and Research Program, Creative Writing Program, Policy Studies Organization, Women's Studies Program, African-American Cultural Program