Throughout her book, “Warmth of Other Sons,” Isabel Wilkerson discusses life during the time of the Great Migration. She uses the viewpoints of 3 different interviewees in order to stress the obstacles and burdens faced by many African Americans during the time period surrounding the Great Migration. Besides for the hardship of having to migrate from the places you’ve known all of your life to one which is unknown, these people were burdened with yet another obstacle, their race. Although they were human, they were treated as unequal due to the color of their skin.

Before the Great Migration, most African Americans lived in the Southern States, in extremely tough conditions. As the first excerpt mentions, they lived in a type of caste system, where they worked as slaves, sharecroppers and farmers. Furthermore, they were controlled by the Jim Crow laws, which would take every chance it got to execute and torture them. However, as much as they had to endure in the South, they were forced to face many challenges as they moved to the North as well. From the excerpts we can see that as blacks migrated to the north they were faced with many obstacles. Not only were they looked at as inferior to whites, but they faced many instances of racial discrimination as well. They were discriminated against when it came to the labor force and in many cases they were unable to get certain jobs due to the color of their skin. Furthermore, it was also prohibited for them to live in certain neighborhoods and to eat in certain restaurants.

What was so intriguing about these excerpts was the fact that you can see how much the world has changed in a short matter of time. Although it pains me to look back on the past and to notice all of the hardships African Americans had to endure, I gain a lot of pleasure knowing how much this country has progressed. In this day and age, not only African Americans, but the people of all races and nationalities are seen as equals. There is little to almost no discrimination in the workplace and everyone has the same opportunity as the person next to him. Race does not separate people and does not determine your fact. Instead, each and everyone of us have the opportunity to control our own destiny. As opposed to the time of the Great Migration, race does not control our futures, we do.

One sentence that really had a great impact on the way I viewed life was when Wilkerson wrote, “How did they get the courage to leave all they ever knew for a place they had never seen, the will to be more than the South said they had a right to be?” I found this sentence to be truly amazing because I couldn’t even bare to try and imagine what these people had to go through. Their lives had been dictated for them from the start. From when they were born they were being told how to live and what they could do. Now, they were deciding the type of life they wanted to live and were determined to attain that. Furthermore, to me the idea of moving out of the city and town you had lived all your life to go to a city you had only seen in a catalog is truly petrifying. I feel out of place when I’m in the next neighborhood and all of these people were able to travel across the country to a destination that was foreign to them. The conditions in the South must have been truly unbearable for them to embark on such a journey. In fact, Wilkerson describes them as fleeing from a “spell or high fever.”

What was so interesting about this reading was the fact that it was able to shed light on something that is overlooked. Everyone fails to recognize that the world wasn’t instantaneously transformed to the way it looks today. Different time periods were unlike one another and the world had to slowly evolve into what it is today. The migration of African Americans to Northern cities was first met with opposition and segregation, however, as time went on the people of different races began to accept one another and recognized that in order to maximize the well-being of society we much share beliefs and cultures. The one question I would have for Wilkerson would be, how was society able to change from how it looked back then to the way it is today?

Although I have learned about the migration within the country, where African Americans from the South moved up to the North to begin a new life, the excerpts found in “Warmth of Other Suns” really brought the journey to life. I was most affected by the fourth book with Ida Mae Brandon Gladney’s experience trying to rebuild her life, as well as the descriptive riots. When learning about this in history class, it is extremely objective and you do feel sympathy, but reading first hand accounts tug on the reader’s emotions, which is exactly what it did to me.

While reading Gladney’s time in Milwaukee, most of her experience was familiar. Moving up North would require her husband to find a job, and it was given that during that time it would be difficult for her husband to find a stable job. Especially since the war had just ended and soldiers were coming back home, which would mean they would take their jobs back. However, it seems that when Gladney’s migrated to the North most jobs were not available. Even if that were the case, it may be possible for her husband to find a job for cheap labor. However, according to Gladney’s it did not seem so since they moved to Chicago.

Before Mr. Gladney’s had moved to Chicago to find a more stable job to support his family, Ida Gladney’s was pregnant and had traveled down South to give birth. I found this extremely interesting. This is the first I’ve ever heard of people traveling down South to give birth. If Ida was already in the North, would it not have been better to give birth there as it would save money and be more convenient? Also, was it not possible to find a midwife in the North? Regardless, Ida’s decision appears to have led Mr. Gladney’s choice to move to Chicago. If Ida had stayed in the North to give birth, I do not think Mr. Gladney’s would have moved to Chicago and they would not have gotten their own small home. Mr. Gladney’s hard work as an iceman that helped buy a home for his family illustrated how even after slavery ended life was still hard for African Americans.

During the Gladney family’s time in Chicago, riots were erupting everywhere. The stories mentioned, such as a young African American boy being killed and stirring up riots, were extremely heart-wrenching. These accounts made the riots that killed and injured so many people feel more real instead of just being statistically told from a history textbook of what happened. Also, these stories illustrate the extremity of the racial tension and conflict.

From Ida’s experience, I got to understand from her first hand experience of the hardships that she faced. Many of them are similar to the hardships that many immigrants of other ethnicity faced.  From her time to the present, many things have changed and it feels unrealistic that all these racial discrimination and hardships existed back then. However, I believe it is inevitable that all past occurrences happened; because they happened, we are where we are today.

These excerpts from Wilkerson’s Warmth of Other Suns were a great read for me because I really enjoy American history, especially regarding race issues. I’ve heard the story of blacks moving out of the South during the twentieth century, but I’ve never read anything related to the topic that was so detailed. These first-hand accounts of the Great Migration were very enlightening and intriguing to read.

Something from the first excerpt that caught my attention was Wilkerson’s question regarding her mother’s picture: “Was it a braver thing to stay, or was it a braver thing to go?” (12). I think the answer is both, and that either one can be interpreted as cowardice towards the other. Of course it was incredibly brave to embark alone on a journey into an unknown world, but it would have also been brave to stay and endure the cruelties of segregation. On the other hand, leaving could mean you were afraid of what would happen if you’d stayed, and staying could mean you were afraid of what would happen if you’d left.

The closing statements of the first excerpt are: “They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left,” (15). Wilkerson offers multiple examples of humans doing just that over the course of a few hundred years, and each one made me wonder what would have happened if the people had never left. It’s great to hear the stories of those who defined the Great Migration, but now I’m curious to hear the stories of those who didn’t. I want to know who was eventually better off—the people who left or the people who stayed.

Although history often leads us to believe that those who left were much better off, it appears that such is not necessarily the case. As mentioned in the seventh excerpt, even in the North, blacks were condemned to certain residential areas and were restricted in terms of their jobs. Discrimination was nonexistent in general, but Northerners still exercised their own personal discriminations by, for example, keeping blacks out of their organizations.

Warmth of Other Suns is a great retelling of an important part of American history. It provides an interesting perspective on something that most people don’t recognize as an event. I felt that it could have included some different viewpoints, such as from people on the other side of the migration, but it still offered good and thought-provoking insight on something that affected many lives.

In “The Warmth of Other Suns,” Isabel Wilkerson talks about different viewpoints from African Americans during the Great Migration. She interviews three people who migrated to the north during the Great Migration. I found this topic to be very interesting since it is not very easy to find people of that generation to share their experiences from those difficult times.

Prior to this reading, I never thought of African Americans to discriminate between suitors based on the skin of their color. The struggles that African Americans went through during the Great Migration and before then are hard to describe for those who experienced it. For example, the trip to school for Ida Mae is very difficult to understand for most people today because of the ease of transportation and greater equality in society.

It is hard to imagine life in which people have to take certain modes of transportation, even walk, for long distances based on the color of their skin. The decision for many African Americans to leave their homes in the South and move to the North was clearly very hard since it would change their lives forever. Considering the famous African American people in today’s generation and the fact that they would not have been in their position today if it was not for their ancestors who made the decision to migrate, it is drastic to think of how different society would be.

I believe that today’s society is almost the complete opposite of society at the time of the Great Migration. Back then, racial discrimination was still present and there were still separation in public places. Southern African Americans decided to move to northern cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, because their lives were already so difficult in the south. Their decision was definitely very risky since they did not have any established residence in the north nor any occupation. It was essentially a whole new country for them, as Wilkerson describes the migration experience.

Overall, I found this reading to be very informative and it certainly taught me a lot about the experiences of the migrants after the segregation against African Americans was outlawed. Most, if not all, of the northern cities in today’s America would be drastically different if those people had not made the decision to move. The migration of black Americans led to great developments such as the rise of the language and music of urban America that sprang from the blues that came along with the migrants and dominates our airwaves today. After the influx of African Americans into northern cities, the appearance and make-up of those cities changed.

From valleys, civilizations and kingdoms in this modern 21^st century we are now left with this concept of a city. In his piece “What is an American City,” Michael B. Katz attempts to break down the definition of a modern city. However, this task serves quite a challenge, as there are multiple factors that make up a city, but there seems to be a general consensus on the idea that the suburbs are becoming the new city. Ultimately, with the goal of reforming political policies, Katz makes a strong argument on how essential it is we begin our “new urban progressivism.”

The first step that Katz takes is to define what the modern city is. The original definition of urbanism and cities was “tightly settled and organized units” whereas “suburban urbanization” like the city of Los Angeles, doesn’t have an exact center but rather the vast suburbs are what make the city instead. This process began primarily because African Americans moving into cities and the whites moved out to the developing suburbs. Through gentrification and racial segregation the dynamic of the suburbs began to change as more and more, as single affluent Americans moved there, resulting in the suburbs becoming the new city. While there was often an economic and racial segregation between these places and the “city” both of these areas were codependent on one another.

This theory of the suburbs being just as important if not part of the city dynamic is something that truly makes sense to me. I live in Long Island and I can see how the five boroughs and even Nassau County play an integral part to the functioning of New York City as one of the global cities. There is outsourcing, corporate headquarters all located on the outskirts of Manhattan, and most importantly the majority of people who work in Manhattan live outside of it considering the more stress free lifestyle. This outward looking metaphor appears to make more sense to me because the suburbs seem to be exponentially growing as the study seen by Robert E. Lang and his colleagues.

Katz’ concept of a global metaphor is also a theory that adds up because essentially the entire world is interconnected by multiple factors including the economy, fashion music and more. There are global cities that serve as a “transnational market” and this further proves Katz idea that changing public policy towards cities is not only required but also essential if America wants to maintain its position as a forerunner in the world economy.

I feel as if Katz did a pretty good job putting together this complicated idea in a few pages, however his writing was a bit dense and therefore a little hard to follow. However, his writing did definitely make his point clear that a new progressive era is required to keep up with this new and expanding metropolitan area around us. For further discussion my main question would be what public policies would we enforce so that the suburbs and the city can be the most efficient when working together? Should we further our public transportation? Should we remove the private sectors out of things such as public transportation, street cleaning and security? What do we do to prevent disasters such as homelessness, crumbling infrastructure and the sub-prime mortgage crisis?

In “What is an American city?,” Michael B. Katz discusses how American cities formed and changed over time. He explains that these changes make it nearly impossible to provide an accurate definition of what an American city is. The different cities in America developed under different circumstances and evolved to accommodate changing times. I agree with the idea that older models of defining American cities are no longer suitable.

Historically, most cities in America were formed around industry but, as Katz describes, this is no longer the case. Over time, the economy of America has switched from being industry-based to service-based. Some cities declined due to this transformation but others evolved and continued to thrive. These changes mean that the old characterization of American Cities as ones centered around industry is unsuitable.

I agree with Katz that we can no longer use the old characterization of American cities. I am not sure, however, if it would even be possible to come up with a new characterization of American cities. As cities evolved, each one became unique. At the same time, however, cities around the world have become more similar as the world became more globalized and cultures influenced each other.

In most cases, I don’t believe that it is appropriate to define cities based on the countries in which they are located. We live in a globalized world and major cities today function as hubs for international interactions. Cities like New York have substantial immigrant populations and, at any given time, usually contain a large number of people visiting from other parts of the world. Because of this, labeling a city as “American” seems unfitting.

In the world we live in, I am not sure that the different cities within one country are similar enough to come up with a characterization of what a city in that country is like. I don’t believe that two American cities are any less different from each other than from many other cities around the world. While every city has its own history and cultural influences that may differentiate it from or relate it to other cities, I don’t believe that it is possible to properly characterize a city as American.

In the New York Times article, “Diagnosis: Battered but Vibrant”, Benedict Carey discusses how a neighborhood environment can shape its future as well as the life of its residents. Carey talks specifically about a series of catastrophes happened within one of Chicago’s middle class neighborhood called Chatham. When social scientists studied Chicago’s neighborhood, they predicted that Chatham should be able to remain stable during the recession; however, it turns out to be completely different from what people were expecting.

I think that the most important factor of the neighborhood that will directly affect its future is the people. When there are economic hard time, or social disasters such as crimes, people must get united and fight to create a better future for their community. As I am reading through this article I actually have a question in my mind, Wortham’s father was saying that Cole Park was a very safe park, “but it got to where no one was controlling it”, I was wondering that whether there are 100% safe park exist, or they just seem like they are safe, but still have a high potential rate of being dangerous because sometimes there can be no one regulating the park.