Extra Credit - Isabel Wilkerson

I had the fantastic opportunity to listen to Isabel Wilkerson speak about her amazing book The Warmth of Other Suns. One of the points that she emphasized multiple times throughout her talk was that the Great Migration was the first time in American history that people of the lowest caste in society realized that they had a choice and took advantage of them so that they could lead better lives. She discussed that Blacks were so limited in the South that even the Bible was segregated: In the court during trials, Blacks were forced to swear on a different Bible that the Whites. And every four days, African Americans were lynched for breeching the Jim Crow Laws of the South. These are just a few things that led the Blacks to leaving the South and moving North.

The Great Migration consisted of about six million Blacks leaving the South and moving the East Coast, Mid West, or the West Coast. World War I had many causalities of white men from the North and caused many of the migrants that lived in the North to move back home to Europe. This rapid population decline opened up many opportunities for Black to get jobs and make money so that they could move their families up North. Of course this movement of the Blacks up North upset the Southerners and they tried everything to keep the Blacks in the South to work on their farms and railroads.

When asked why she wrote the book, Isabel Wilkerson answered that none of us would be where we are now of our parents or grandparents, or great grandparents didn’t migrate. She made the points that those who left were not doing it for themselves, but for their families and their descendents; they left for us, for their unborn children, so that we could have the best opportunities possible. Important Black figures like Toni Morrison, August Wilson, Diana Ross, John Coltrane, and even Michael Jackson would not have had the significant lives they lived if their families did not migrate to the North.

Wilkerson stated that, “we are all products of the Great Migration”, something that I had never thought about until I read her book. I never thought that my grandfather’s migration from Virginia to New Jersey was done not only so that he could free himself but so that he could free his children and his grandchildren. I think the most important thing that my generation can do is accomplish the goals we have and then surpass them so that we can do our ancestors of the Great Migration justice; we owe it to the millions of migrants to be the best we can possibly be.