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

by Isabel Wilkerson

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

“May the Lord be the first one in the car,” she prayed, “and the last out.”

A railing divided the stairs onto the train, one side of the railing for white passengers, the other for colored, so the soles of their shoes would not touch the same stair.

was during the First World War that a silent pilgrimage took its first steps within the borders of this country. The fever rose without warning or notice or much in the way of understanding by those outside its reach.

Or did the black exodus force the South to face itself in ways no one could ever have thought possible?