African Immigrants and the American Experience

A Lecture and Conversation with Dr. Kefa Otiso

As part of the celebration for Black History Month, learn more about African immigrants in the United States.

The population of African immigrants in the United States has grown rapidly over the past few decades. Hear from Dr. Kefa Otiso, who has extensively studied African immigration to the U.S. as one of his primary research interests, and gain perspectives of what it truly means to be a sub-Saharan African immigrant in the United States. This lecture and conversation is brought to you in partnership with Welcome Bowling Green, Welcome Toledo-Lucas County, and the Library's African American Appreciation Coalition (AAAC).

The Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH) has selected African Americans and Labor as the theme of Black History Month 2025. From the ASALH website (asalh.org):

The 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans, and Labor, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. Indeed, work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture. Be it the traditional agricultural labor of enslaved Africans that fed Low Country colonies, debates among Black educators on the importance of vocational training, self-help strategies and entrepreneurship in Black communities, or organized labor’s role in fighting both economic and social injustice, Black people’s work has been transformational throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. The 2025 Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor,” sets out to highlight and celebrate the potent impact of this work.