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The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson

Start date: September 15, 2011

Finish date: October 15, 2011

Discussion leader: Carol

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Jan 27, 2017 Happyreader rated it it was amazing

Shelves: bio-and-memoir, history-politics, favorites

I spent a couple of years once or twice a week driving to Woodlawn, Englewood, and the far South Side with a woman who left Mississippi in the late 1960s. Loved her stories of marching as a teenager with Dr. King. Spent a lot of time discussing the racial politics of living in Chicago and the changes she had witnessed over the past 40 plus years. In defiance of all she’d seen and experienced, she was positive and happy and a joy to spend time with. This is also the experience I had once we reach I spent a couple of years once or twice a week driving to Woodlawn, Englewood, and the far South Side with a woman who left Mississippi in the late 1960s. Loved her stories of marching as a teenager with Dr. King. Spent a lot of time discussing the racial politics of living in Chicago and the changes she had witnessed over the past 40 plus years. In defiance of all she’d seen and experienced, she was positive and happy and a joy to spend time with. This is also the experience I had once we reached the groups we were working with in Chicago’s South Side.

That’s the same experience that I had with this book. Personal, first-person accounts bearing witness provides this history with dramatic tension and immediacy. You feel the exhaustion of hauling 100 lbs of cotton on your back in the blazing sun, the anxiety of telling the plantation owner that this is the last harvest after the planter's posse invaded your home and brutally beat your cousin for a theft he did not commit, the fear and the urgency to leave town when told the orange grove owners are planning to lynch you after you organized the pickers for higher wage, the despair after driving through the Arizona desert all night and not one motel will rent you a room because they fear reprisal from the other motel owners.

It’s devastating how an entire population of American citizens were terrorized and abused without consequence. When you read about the lynchings, the bombings and false imprisonments, the unlawful manipulations to coerce people to work for sub-standard wages through intimidation, cheating, and arrest, the Jim Crow laws preventing integration and voting, you forget you’re reading about post-Emancipation America. At the same time, you’re left more in awe of the resiliency of people forced to contend with so much blatant racism. From this book and my own experiences, I’ve always been impressed with how African American families and communities come together and support each other.

This was the perfect book to read in place of watching the inauguration of a Birther president. A great reminder of how easily rights can be trampled and groups can be demonized and wrongly blamed as the cause of rising crime and economic hardship. Echoes of the negative portrayal of illiterate, lazy, crime-prone Southern blacks filling up northern cities contrary to actual facts can be heard in our Birther-in-Chief’s insistence that undocumented residents are the cause of rising crime and economic ruin despite evidence to the contrary. Alternative facts are not actual facts, as this book testifies. ...more

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