Isabel Wilkerson establishes a very powerful introduction to her book. In the The Warmth of Other Suns, Wilkerson provides an informative overview on what her book would be about. It encompasses the struggles of twentieth-century African Americans in the South, their movement to the North, and how society has changed because of their journey. Most people today take many things for granted. But through Wilkerson’s tone, it is easily seen that she does not take what her mother did for granted. In fact, she questions how life would be or if she would even exist had it not been for her mother’s courage. She asks, “Would I (and millions of people born in the North and West) have even existed?” (Wilkerson 12). In her point of view, leaving the South was the strongest and bravest thing anyone could have done.
To cover what she wanted for her book, Wilkerson interviewed “more than twelve hundred people” who “gave hundreds of hours of their days to share with me what was perhaps the singular turning point in their lives” (13). This certainly makes her book comprehensive, but I was surprised by that amount of people. Of these people, one was Ida Mae Brandon Gladney whom she made a main character. When I studied U.S. History and the plantations in the South, I failed to realize that blacks did not see any of the technological advancements made. Thus, I was shocked that Ida never saw bridges or even simple street lamps. She was completely out of place.
One point I found interesting was when Wilkerson stated that there were more African Americans living in Chicago than in Mississippi at the turn of the twenty-first century. It is surprising that the population can skyrocket that much and that quick as a result of the Great Migration. This just shows the immense impact the movement had on society – major cities such as Chicago had changed. The South radically changed as well.
Another thing I found particularly interesting was how certain misrepresentations caused the non-blacks to think negatively of the whole black population. People of the North thought that these migrants from the South were dysfunctional, promiscuous, unemployed, etc. They basically had bad reputations and negative images. Research by scholars however, show that these migrants were more apt than Northern blacks. In fact, these newcomers had higher rates of marriage, higher income, higher labor force participation rates (14). In “Transplanted in Alien Soil”, an employer during the First World War said that they were more loyal, quicker, and happier than other laborers (244). This reminds me of immigrants who came to America and had jobs. They shared similar work attitudes and worked earnestly.
Overall, I found Wilkerson to be very interesting and very informative. Although I thought I knew a lot about the South, I learned a lot from these excerpts – the struggles and hardships of blacks through Wilkerson’s collective and comprehensive work based on individual accounts. It is certainly hard for me to imagine New York City if blacks did not leave the South and create the Great Migration movement. Nonetheless, I am glad to live in the equal society we have today. One question I would like to ask Wilkerson would be: If the Great Migration had not occurred, what do you think would have happened to society?
