For many, the words Black and suburban are opposites. For decades, we have carried in our minds an image of suburban places as well-appointed with White picket fences and White people. While this may have been a portrait of suburbia in the 20th century, today, the suburbs are the most diverse segment of American housing.

 Today, Black people and the suburbs are closely linked and there are a range of Black suburban experiences. The Black suburban experience is what you see on television shows like Blackish, as well as what you see streaming across news sites as they report on the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri. The Black suburban experience is far wider than scholars have documented and here at the Black Suburban Experience Project, we seek to help fill in those gaps.

With the majority of Black people in major metropolitan areas now residing in suburbs, more Black children being educated in suburban schools than city schools, and with more people dying at the hands of police in the suburbs than in cities, we have to rethink what we know about the Black suburban experience. A lack of attention to suburbs for decades has led researchers to assume what it means to live outside of the city rather than seriously study who is there and what they experience. Spearheaded by R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy, Kimberley Johnson, and Kiara Wyndham-Douds, The Black Suburban Experience Project is a multimethod, interdisciplinary endeavor aimed at not only complicating our understanding of suburban experience but also raising new questions and insights about it.