THE EPIC STORY OF AMERICA’S GREAT MIGRATION
Whatever your background, but especially if you are a black American, The Warmth of Other Suns is a must read. Not only must you read this book, but you should pass it on to everyone you know.
The book, released in late 2010, chronicles a watershed event in American history – using the stories of three individuals and their families to recount the decades-long great migration of African Americans from the South to the North and West, which lasted from World War I through the 1970s.
Written by Isabel Wilkerson, who in 1994 was the first black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing,and the first African American to win for individual reporting, The Warmth of Other Suns will stand as a classic of narrative journalism and of modern American history, on par with works by Diane McWhorter, Doris Kearns Goodin and Robert Caro.
Ms. Wilkerson spent over ten years researching and writing this book, drawing on archival materials and over 1,200 interviews to trace the lives of Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Robert Foster from their difficult lives in the South to their critical decisions to leave behind all they know to look for a better life in Chicago, New York and Los Angeles.
The Great Migration is perhaps the most underreported stories of the twentieth century, perhaps due to the fact that it was so vast and unfolded over many decades. Yet the more than six million black Americans who participated in the Great Migration were the silent actors in racial and social change in this country. They weren’t the ones leading Civil Rights Movement marches or perhaps not marching at all. They were the ones who were quietly forced to leave the arcane and often brutal remnants of the South’s “percular institution” in search of an unknown better life for themselves and their children.
Some of these migrants, as well as their children and grandchildren, would go on to become among the most influential people in the country: Oprah Winfrey, Toni Morrison, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Michelle Obama, August Wilson, Denzel Washington, Diana Ross, Aretha Franklin, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Thelonious Monk, Arthur Ashe, Michael Jackson, Prince, Tupac Shakur, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X, to name a few. Yet, the ones who had the greatest influence on America’s history were the millions of other Great Migration characters who simply raised successful families and made positive contributions to their communities without fame and fanfare.
This extraordinary book is a universal story of longing, loss and hope – people leaving one isolated land for the dream of a better life in more fertile soil. As with Tom Brokow’s, The Greatest Generation, theirs are stories of adventure and courage. Published by Random House, The Warmth of Other Suns is a must read.
