Excellent history of the movement of American blacks out of the southern states and into the north and west of the U.S. to escape the impact of the continuing Jim Crow laws on every facet of their lives. Wilkerson has found three exemplars of this internal migration who individually moved to New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, three of the popular points due to railway lines and highways. Using these three individuals we learn some of the reasons black citizens without rights decided to make thi More...

I loved this book on several levels--though with one caveat. First and foremost, by narrating the lives of three very different participants in the Great Migration, Wilkerson fleshes out an important historical story that most of us know only in general outline, if that. The details of routine racial discrimination that these individuals faced both before and after coming to the North are horrifyingly vivid and impossible to ignore. Wilkerson's research is thorough and deep, and her (somewhat co More...

Thinking back, I tried to recall some of the migrations that took place within America that I had learned about:

- The Gold Rush
- The Dustbowl Migration

Somewhere along the lines, my teachers forgot to mention the approximately six million people that left the Jim Crow South during 1915-1975, in search of a “kinder mistress”, and that they summoned up the courage, and risked their lives to drive cross-country, illegally hop trains, and save for months to secure a train ticket headed to Los Angeles More...

NO SPOILERS!!!

Through page 72: I am finding this book both intellectually interesting and emotionally gripping. That is exactly what I have been looking for. The book focuses on the life of thre blacks: Ida Mae who emigrated from Mississippi to Chicago in 1937, George who fled from Florida to NY in 1945 and finally Robert Pershing who left in 1953 seeking to establish himself in California. The book follow these three individual and others for 100 years, during two world wars, the Depression and More...

This was an enjoyable experience from beginning to end. The author chronicles the lives of many who fled the south and focuses on three incredible individuals. It is a testament to all who wanted a better life for themselves and for their family. It is a story we need to hear again and again until we put aside our differences and embrace our fellow man.
I can't think of anyone to whom I would not recommend this book.

Unbelievably good and full of facts you should know but probably don't. Truly, truly remarkable read.

Enthralling work of narrative nonfiction about a vitally important part of American history. I want this to be made into a show on HBO.

This book tells the story of the migration of African Americans from the South, starting in 1915 and continuing into the 1950s and even until the 1970s. Millions of black people left the South and settled in the North and West of the United States, mostly in urban areas. In many ways they were similar to immigrants fleeing oppression from another land. "They were More...

Excellent anecdotal account of the migration of blacks out from the South between the years 1915-1970. The extent of Jim Crow laws, with the lynchings and segregation, which impacted every aspect of life continues to shock me. How we justify treating another race as less than animals seems so devoid of humanity that I wouldn't believe it true except the tendency is so well chronicled. So I try to pretend anti-semitism was peculiar to Russia or Germany but that I wouldn't practice it. I try to pr More...

I wish I had it in my power to make this book required reading for everyone, at least all students. When we cringe at the horrors waged against others in the world today, we need to remember our own not so distant history and take the lead in driving change.

I would recommend this as required reading for all high school students as well as adult history buffs and anyone, like me, who appreciates a personalized, yet no less analytical account of an important historical event presented in a lively, readable manner. Wilkerson presents the story of the Great Migration of Blacks from the South to the North and West of the United States that took place from the 1930s though the 1970s and changed the face of this country. The author intersperses historical More...

This is the story of the migration of blacks from the South to the North and West of the United States. For over 60 years, from World War I to the early 1970's, a steady stream of people left the Jim Crow South to seek freedom in the northern and western cities. The author has traced the story of three different people who left the South during three different decades and going to three different cities. Their stories represent the millions of blacks who left. Were their lives better in the Nort More...

This is an excellent read. Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and Professor of Journalism at Boston University. It's no surprise that her research is impeccable. However, only a truly gifted writer can take that research and weave it into stories so riveting that the people she interviewed come alive. The book tells the stories of three people from different places and times who were part of the great migration of Southern blacks to Northern cities from approximately 1930-19 More...

This is a contemporary masterpiece. Wilkerson writes with compassion, scholarly rigor, and a historian's curiosity that leads us to countless insights not only into an often neglected period of twentieth century history, but into the human condition. Her primary goal as a historian is to expose the Great Migration for what it most obviously is, a mass immigration of millions of people fleeing an untenable social and economic situation in Jim Crow segregation. As a journalist and author, however, More...

At first, a precious few then a swell of Black Americans, finally numbering over 10 million people, began a journey that spread all over America and the Great Migration had begun. They were searching for the freedom promised them but never to be realized in the south. The great Emancipation of the black race would not be tolerated by the slave owners and land barons of the southern states. Their cruel treatment continued unabated,divisions of families, beatings, hangings, long hard days of manua More...

“When the time had come, Ida Mae and little James and Velma and all that they could carry were loaded into a brother-in-law’s truck, and the three of them went to meet Ida Mae’s husband at the train depot in Okolona for the night ride out of the bottomland.”

Just last year, I was helping my middle schooler study for his social studies test. One of the questions was about The Great Migration. Quite frankly, I had never heard that term before. There was no question that black Americans left the S More...

The Warmth of Other Suns is a transformative book, one that can profoundly change and shape the way we view American history. The list of awards and accolades is so long the book does not need my imprimateur, but I will echo each and every one by saying, "Read this."

From 1915 to 1970, thousands of black Americans undertook a pilgrimage of hope and determination that led them from cotton fields, rice and tobacco plantations, from villages and towns in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky More...

I remember that even we, with as little money as we had, had three members of a local black family working for us down in Alabama on Chickadale Farm. John helped daddy with the chickens, Essie came and cleaned on Saturdays (when her "sugar" wasn't bothering her). And when she was down with her sugar, she sent Juliet. I was enchanted with Juliet. I don't remember specifically why I was enamored with her - I think it was that she was so young and these three were the only black people I knew (othe More...

Here’s a book I wish I could encourage every reader I know to add to their list – not only because it’s a good read, but more importantly because we all need to be more aware of what it has to teach us. It’s a meticulously researched and superbly written narrative about the great migration of some six million black Americans who left the South during the years between WWI and the 1970’s. The author is a descendent of parents whose stories are similar to so many others who made the often perilous More...

Hard to be succinct when reviewing a book of this magnitude, but I understand why the author won the Pulitzer Prize in journalism (not for this book). American history, period. I knew much of it, but it was still helpful to see it condensed and put into perspective. Made me even more thankful that my grandmother insisted that she and my grandfather leave Texas, though the rest of the family stayed there and prospered. The absurdity of Jim Crow is covered in full, but the most nagging detail to m More...

Recently, I finally got around to reading Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. I could appreciate the frustration and bitterness that the main character felt, but I found it difficult to relate to him, stay engaged, or get a sense of what it really was like for African-Americans living as outcasts in 1950's America. The protagonist had no depth as a character because Mr. Ellison used him merely as a sounding board for the plight of his people.

The Warmth of Other Suns, for me, accomplished what Invisi More...

Yay, meets my goal of reading one nonfiction a month this year. And what a strong story this is. Wilkerson tells of the Great Migration of African-Americans northward and westward to flee the Jim Crow South from the years 1915-1970. The history is so compelling but what Wilkerson does wonderfully is highlight the stories of 3 individuals: Ida Mae who leaves sharecropping in Mississippi in the 30's to live in Chicago, George who escapes lynching from the citrus groves of Florida and boards a trai More...

In The Warmth of Other Suns Wilkerson has composed a masterpiece of narrative journalism on a subject vital to our national identity, as compelling as it is heartbreaking and hopeful. Critics, however, were less certain about whether Wilkerson has written a definitive history of the Great Migration. Several reviewers saw the book as an important corrective to previous scholarship on the Migration that too often grouped African Americans into a voiceless mass, that focused exclusively on the nega More...

This is an amazing description of the great migration, the massive movement of american blacks from the rural south to the urban north and west between 1915 and 1970. During this time about 6 million people made the journey. The author accomplishes this by following three typical people, a doctor who migrated from Louisiana to Los Angeles, a fruit picker who moved from Florida to New York and a sharecropper who went from Mississippi to Chicago.

The author skillfully weaves together the personal s More...

What a great book, in every sense of the word. She's looking at the rarely examined but massive phenomenon of Black migration out of the South in the twentieth century. She follows three people, from three different decades of migration to three distinct destinations. But she captures their experience so well. Despite their differences in education and destination, they had all experienced the humiliation, shame, and serious danger of Jim Crow. It makes me so ashamed of my adopted country that s More...

This is a wonderful study that teases out and analyzes the meaning of one of the most important happenings in American history. The author gives us both an overall view of this great migration and the intimate details of its effect upon the lives of three migrants. She carefully documents the important fact that the cities of the North and West had a very negative impact upon the migrants and made life very hard for them. Their migration was just the same as that of those who came to the U.S. fr More...

At the start of its 672 page report, on the 1919 Chicago riots, the sober white led Chicago commission on race relations, presaging sentiments of a yet to be born African-American president, whose rise would have been beyond imagination, admonished in 1922;
"It is important for our white citizens always to remember that the Negroes alone of all immigrants came to America against their will by the special compelling invitation of the whites and the institution of slavery was introduced , expanded More...

Isabella Wilkerson’s 2010 work The Warmth of Other Suns tells the story of The Great Migration by following the stories of George Starling, Robert Pershing Foster and Ida Mae Brandon Gladney. Growing up inside the South’s racial caste system, each of Wilkerson’s protagonists felt the smothering weight of a society whose primary lesson to black children as they became adults was the rights they would be cheated of, the boundaries they must observe, and the violence that policed them. In 1937 Ida More...

This is a remarkable book. It tells the story of the Jim Crow South, how blacks were treated there, why they left in huge numbers to move to cities in the North.

Then it tells the detailed stories of several individuals, researched in great detail, starting with their background under Jim Crow, why they felt they had to leave, their departure, and what they encountered in the North.

I had known the Jim Crow consisted of terrible segregation, but what I had not realized was that it was really tant More...

One of the best books I read last year...Wilkerson expertly and thoroughly explores a a little researched subject, the historical black migration from the South to points North and West during the 20th century until the 1960s...This is a multi layered generational story of the brave families who bucked jim Crow, pulled up their roots and left their place of familiarity to start news lives in an unknown territory...The saga is as exciting as the Westward Movements of the pioneers 70 years before More...

My first and overwhelming sense from this was that I simply didn't know about the severity and expansiveness of the Jim Crow laws. In my defense I grew up in England, I came here as an adult in 1993, so US history was not covered with much detail in my schooling. I knew about the segregation because it was often compared with South Africa, the apartheid there was a huge thing when I was growing up, protests and never buying South African goods was the order of the day. So the book is a huge eye More...