"Leaving Forever"

 There is no mistaking what is going on; it is a regular exodus.  It is without head, tail, or leadership.  Its greatest factor is momentum, and this is increasing, despite amazing efforts on the part of white Southerners to stop it.  People are leaving their homes and everything about them, under cover of night, as though they were going on a day’s journey—leaving forever.  (The Cleveland Advocate, April 28, 1917) 

The Warmth of other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson is a story of the Great Migration, a period in the United States between 1915 through 1970 when six million African American people fled the oppression and lack of opportunity in the south for the suns of the northern and western states.

The book is the history of a movement away from “a caste system as hard and unyielding as the red Georgia clay."  Often, it is told through the stories of three migrants:  Ida Mae Gladney left Mississippi in 1937 with her husband and children after a relative was brutally beaten for a crime he hadn't committed.  George Starling left Florida in 1945 after he receiving a warning that there plans to lynch him for organizing orange pickers to bargain for better wages.  Robert Joseph Pershing Foster left Monroe, Louisiana in 1953 because, as a surgeon, he was limited as to where and how he could practice medicine

In the first part of the book, there is a feeling of exaltation as black people escape a culture that had changed little since the days of slavery.  Ironically after a history of mistreating black people, white southerners were surprised and upset at the migration; they took for granted the cheap labor of their black neighbors and in many cases tried to prevent their leaving.  For example, “In Albany, George, the police tore up the [train] tickets of colored passengers as they stood waiting to board....”  Others attempting to leave were arrested.  Many left secretly.

The reader may enjoy the frustration of these employers who had so mistreated their employees.  However, it is, in many ways, a disheartening book.  Most migrants were relieved by the freedom and relative safety of their new homes, but they were not completely free of racial restrictions.  For the most part, even in the north, they lacked the opportunities afforded whites.

I read this book because it was recommended by my favorite blogger, Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Coates is studying the ways that public policy has prevented black citizens from amassing wealth.  He lists eight points that stood out after reading the book.  Here is point number four: 

What becomes clear by the end of Wilkerson's book is that America's response to the Great Migration was to enact a one-sided social contract. America says to its citizens, "Play by the rules, and you will enjoy the right to compete." The black migrants did play by the rules, but they did not enjoy the right to compete. Black people have been repeatedly been victimized by the half-assed social contract. It goes back, at least, to Reconstruction.  

For Coates, as a black man, this book must be a prelude to his own story.  (He also writes about the racial disparity of opportunity here, here, and here.) For me, the connection is not as close to my blood, but The Warmth of Other Suns is a touching and troubling addition to the way I understand my home and its opportunities.

(Here I explain how the book received its beautiful title.)