Upcoming Documentary Explores the Untold Story of the African American Midwest

In a region rarely associated with Black history, a group of storytellers are working to bring to light the undertold narrative of the African American Midwest.

“So many people think, outside the Midwest, that the Midwest is a homogeneous region, when really, in many ways, it’s the most diverse, immigrant-built region of all the American regions,” Dan Manatt, producer for a forthcoming documentary series on the topic, said.

“The African American Midwest” website, formed through a collaboration between university professors across the Midwest and beyond, features interviews, histories and resources that share the nuanced history of the Black midwestern experience.

Project team members have been raising funds from humanities councils in the states they are producing documentary shorts, which they intend to eventually combine into a larger, regional documentary, Manatt said.

The team, composed of four executive producers in addition to Manatt, hopes to release the online film in February of 2026 for Black History Month.

While the region is commonly perceived as having little diversity, Pew Research Center found that the Midwest was tied with the Northeast as the region with the second largest Black population, with 17% in 2022. The South had the largest share at 56%.

During the Great Migration in the 20th century, Black Southerners relocated to midwestern and northern cities in search of better lives away from Jim Crow and other forms of discrimination. 

Ashely Howard, executive producer of African American Midwest and professor at the University of Iowa, is originally from Nebraska, and hopes the documentary will fill the gap and share Black midwestern history with more people.

“I felt that my experience as a Black midwestern[er] wasn’t being reflected in our national histories, in our discourse about regional literatures and our concept of what the Midwest means for this nation,” Howard said.

Manatt said Midwest history in general has also been largely unexplored when compared to other regional histories.

“I’ve just been struck both through my family’s personal history in the Midwest, and in those projects, how much tremendous and fascinating history there is in the Midwest that simply has not been covered the way the history of New England or the South or the West has been covered,” Manatt said.

Painting the Midwest as an integral part of America’s struggle for racial justice, Erik McDuffie, executive producer for the project and professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said the film will include historic retellings of events like the Civil Rights Movement and the operation of the Underground Railroad, along with conversations regarding cultural icons like Toni Morrison and Langston Hughes. 

“That claim challenges the perception of the South as the center or cradle of African American struggle,” McDuffie said, pointing out that the Midwest has been and still is where many key figures and events in Black history originated.

Howard also commented on the increased accessibility of film, which can be a barrier to written storytelling. With a wider audience, she hopes the film can have a larger impact.

“History is always at its most impactful when you have participants in that history … giving testimony on camera, telling the stories not only with their words, but with their emotions, with their body language,” Manatt said.

Howard said the interview clips on the website can serve as a jumping-off point to bring more Black narratives into the conversation. “The African American Midwest” will be the first of three documentaries. The second two, coming at later dates, will be about the Native American Midwest and the immigrant Midwest.

“One really big impact for me in this project is making people feel that they have a home … where they’re at,” Howard said.

But Manatt also hopes this film has a wide impact that is not solely limited to the Midwest.

“It’s exciting to break new ground and widen the lens of how Americans see their country, how Midwesterners see their region, and that’s really why we’re doing this,” Manatt said.