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Saturday, December 8, 2018
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[Lauretta Charlton]
Lauretta Charlton
Every summer during my childhood, my family would take a road trip from Southern California to visit my grandparents in rural Texas. They had a modest house in the country. I remember spending our days sitting on the front porch, with the sun-bleached metal rocking chairs, the melting Popsicles, my grandmother braiding our hair.
The porch was simple. Concrete. Two steps. Covered. It was where I learned about black life in the South â its folklore, traditions and spiritual foundations. It was where I learned about myself.
This week, my colleague Audra D.S. Burch wrote about the porch and its significance in the African-American imagination.
Audra went to Detroit with Germane Barnes, an African-American architecture professor at the University of Miami whose current research explores the historical role that the front porch has played in shaping black identity, and interviewed black homeowners about their porches.
More than an entrance to a home, the porch loomed large as a stage, a window, a symbol of success, a place for healing.
After the story [published]( readers quickly contributed their own memories of spending time on their porch. âI am not African-American, but may I share my porch story?â wrote one New York Times reader:
âMy father died when I was a child and he suffered his illness at home and died there. My parents had different Jewish backgrounds, with my mother more Conservative and kosher, and my father Reform and not, and they agreed when they married that although my father could eat whatever he wanted outside, there would be no treyf in the house. When my father was dying, my grandmother asked if she could bring over his favorite food, which was lobster. My mother said, âYes, of course,â and she did, in an enormous pot, but he ate it outside, on the porch.â
Although his research is centered on African-Americans, Mr. Barnes recognizes that the porch is not unique to black life. âArchitecture and identity go hand in hand,â he said.
Audra told me that in her work as a National correspondent, she often explores not only how people live, but the moments and places that help shape their cultural identity. âIn looking at the front porch as a cultural artifact,â she said, âI was hoping to learn how this common physical space had become central to the African-American experience. I started by asking people, âWhat does the front porch mean to you?ââ
Weâd love to know about your memories on the front porch and how they informed who you are. Email us at racerelated@nytimes.com.
Last, remember a few weeks ago when I asked you to share your first memory of encountering racism? Iâm excited to announce that we will be publishing a few of them in their entirety in the coming weeks. Please look for them and tell us what you think!
Have a great weekend,
Lauretta
[On the Front Porch, Black Life in Full View](
[](
Photograph by Wayne Lawrence for The New York Times
[Audra D. S. Burch]
Audra D. S. Burch
DETROIT â It is a place to gather after Saturday night dinners and after the church doors open on Sunday afternoons. A dais upon which to sing lullabies and honor memories, to weave folklore and family stories, the kind carried from greats to grands, from one generation to the next.
In its framed simplicity, the front porch has been a fixture in American life, and among African-Americans it holds outsize cultural significance.
From the narrow shotgun homes of Atlanta to the dormer-windowed bungalows of Chicago, the front porch has served as a refuge from Jim Crow restrictions; a stage straddling the home and the street, a structural backdrop of meaningful life moments. It is like the quietest family member; a gift where community lives and strangers become neighbors.
Zora Neale Hurston, an exquisite chronicler of black Americana, understood the magic and necessity of the porch as a gathering place to witness and soak up history. Her prose cast the porch as a setting for storytelling.
The porch has also inspired scholarship. Germane Barnes, a black architecture professor at the University of Miami, has traveled the country studying its role within black vernacular. âArchitecture and identity go hand in hand,â said Mr. Barnes, 33, who grew up in Chicago.
His research took him to Detroit, where he found a historical city undergoing an economic rebirth and black homeowners eager to share memories of watching life unfold on their front porches.
The porch is where a retired teacher witnessed a race riot. Itâs where a nurse and her mother sat on a swing, morning after morning, until their relationship blossomed into a friendship. Itâs where a community organizer chose to tell stories, full of richness and hope, to help preserve her worn but proud neighborhood.
[Read the full story [here](
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