Isabel Wilkerson: The Warmth of Other Suns

In a story of hope and longing, three young people set out from the American South during different decades of the 20th Century en route to the North and West in search of the Warmth of Other Suns. They were forced out by the limits of the caste into which they were born.

Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster are among the six million African-Americans who fled the South during what would become known as the Great Migration. This book interweaves their stories and those of others who made the journey with the larger forces and inner motivations that compelled them to flee, and with the challenges they confronted upon arrival in the New World.

Based on interviews with 1,200 people who participated in the Migration and on newly available census analyses and research into archival material, The Warmth of Other Suns tells one of the greatest underreported stories in American history. It is the story of how the northern cities came to be, of the music and culture that might not have existed had the people not left, the consequences North and South and, most importantly, of the courageous souls who dared to leave everything they knew for the hope of something better.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a must read for anyone that is a descendant of one of the thousands of African Americans that made the move West or North. It is a powerfull, engaging chronicle of the lives and sacrifices made by those who paved the way.