The Great Migrations

I was leaving the South
To fling myself into the unknown….
I was taking a part of the South
To transplant in alien soil,
To see if it could grow differently,
If it could drink of new and cool rains,
Bend in strange winds,
Respond to the warmth of other suns
And, perhaps to bloom.
                        —Richard Wright 

This is the first page of Isabel Wilkerson’s book The Warmth of Other Suns.  I started reading it last night, and at 538 pages, I’m not sure I’ll read the entire book.  But so far, I’ve found it very moving.  Between the years of 1915-1970, “six millions black southerners left the land of their forefathers and fanned out across the country for an uncertain existence in nearly every other corner of America.”  Historians called it the Great Migration.  On some level I vaguely knew this, but I hadn't attached this movement from the south to the concept of migration.  I didn't know the vast numbers.  Moving is an interesting change; migration is a leap.  Fifteen pages into Wilkerson’s book, I felt as if I had important new information about how this country developed.   

The initial quotation from Wright spoke to me personally.  In the last year I’ve studied the history of my own family which appears to be entirely Irish in its origins.  I’ve read some 19th  century Irish history.  I (and most Americans) come from people who flung themselves into the unknown hoping to be nurtured by the warmth of other suns.  There is much to relate to.  But I am expecting to find that those with dark skins found it more difficult to transplant themselves in alien soil than those of us who are “white.”

Still, many of our ancestors shared a common motivation.  Wilkerson concludes an early section with this: 

The actions of the people in this book were both universal and distinctly American.  Their migration was a response to an economic and social structure not of their making.  They did what humans have done for centuries when life became untenable….They left.