The Warmth Of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson follows three Negro families--and millions of other people--through their migration from the Jim Crow South to the crowded cities of the North and West. Their journeys were painful, dangerous, and heartbreaking; the life they made in the new world was sometimes little different from the old. But when they crossed the Ohio River, drove through El Paso into New Mexico, or arrived at Washington D.C., they all seemed to sit up a little straighter in their seats.
I knew that schools were once segregated and there were colored balconies in movie theaters, but I never dreamed that some southern states required entire railroad cars to be designated colored or white. At other times, not the entire car but each group of rows in the car were segregated. A marker denoted "colored" or "white", and an influx of white riders could cause the marker to be moved back a row at a time, forcing the already-crowded colored riders to move into standing room at the back of the car.
Who could endure such a life? Many couldn't--this book tells the story of Ida Mae Brandon Gladley, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, all migrants to the north in the years following World War II. Poor white southerners went north, too--my grandfather and several of my aunts did--seeking jobs in the difficult years of the depression. The black people also sought jobs...but as often sought dignity, basic human rights, and freedom.
In an incredible feat of research and writing. It's like three intertwined biographies--imagine how difficult it is to write even one biography well, and Ms. Wilkerson has done three! It's a fascinating time of history--and a book that's impossible to put down.
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