Taryn Nakamura - Quicklet on Isabel Wilkersons The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of Americas Great Migration

They are exiles with ties to two worlds, still obsessed with the Old Country, and have never let it go.

Isabel Wilkersons The Warmth of Other Suns is truly a labor of love. It took 15 years to research and write, as she interviewed over 1,200 people. Wilkerson tracked down her subjects at churches, quilting clubs, funerals, family reunions, and others. After preliminary rounds of interviews, she narrowed her search down to 30 people, and then chose the three main subjects who appear in the book..

She was racing against the clock to collect as many stories as possible from the migrants, whose numbers were starting to dwindle. Her book even covers the funerals of both George Starling and Robert Pershing Foster.

In order to write her story in a heartfelt manner, Wilkerson recreated Robert Fosters exhausting drive from Louisiana to California. Dr. Foster drove through three states without rest because blacks werent welcome at any motels in those regions. Wilkersons trip was cut short by her parents, who insisted she stop before reaching dangerous levels of fatigue. At a particularly perilous tract of the drive, Wilkerson writes that her mother said, You know he must have been ready to cry right about here.

Wilkersons project has roots in the Works Progress Administrations Federal Writers Project, a collection of ten thousand interviews with common people during the depression. The WPA project employed writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and John Cheever. The compilation of oral literature later showed up in bits of dialogue in novels like Ellisons Invisible Man. Wilkersons project, however, sought the stories of black migrants whose voices have gone unheard.

Wilkerson immersed herself in her subjects and the history. She planted a garden, mirroring Dr. Fosters meticulously planned arrangements of begonias and impatiens. For a while, she read books about lynching and was not very popular at dinner parties. ( A Writers Long Journey to Trace the Great Migration )

Wilkerson writes that her book is a mixture of three projects: a collection of oral histories, a narrative of three characters, and a scholarly review of historical and literary works.

Oftentimes, just to go away, wrote John Dollard, a Yale scholar studying the South in the 1930s, is one of the most aggressive things that another person can do, and if the means of expressing discontent are limited, as in this case, it is one of the few ways in which pressure can be put.

Isabel Wilkerson was called a southerner once removed by Mississippi-born poet Natasha Trethewey. Born to a father from Virginia and a mother from Georgia, Isabel Wilkerson was the daughter of two immigrants. Wilkersons parents migrated to Washington and met at Howard University.

Wilkerson is not the only writer in her family. Her grandfather, an elevator operator in Georgia, typed pages and pages of a memoir that no one read. At the time, he couldnt even enter the building of the local newspaper ( A Writers Long Journey to Trace the Great Migration ).

Wilkersons southern-born parents ensured that she had the advantages that they never couldve had. She attended a white grade school, where she mingled with classmates who spoke of other migrations from Ireland or Scandinavia. She realized that she, too, was the product of a migration. In The Warmth of Other Suns , Wilkerson writes, I gravitated to the children of recent immigrants from Argentina, Nepal, Ecuador, El Salvador, with whom I had so much in common as the children of newcomers.

Wilkerson went into the profession her grandfather dreamed of but was barred from entering. She won a Pulitzer prize in 1994 for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of the New York Times . Additionally, she was the first black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

She has taught at Harvard, Princeton, and Emory. Wilkerson is currently Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University. ( The Author )

They did what human beings looking for freedom, throughout history, have often done. They left.

This book shows the Great Migration through the eyes of three black migrants: Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster. Although they lived in different times and places, their stories are interwoven to show the history of the migration.

Part I: Beginnings

Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, Van Vleet, Mississippi

Ida Mae Brandon Gladney grew up in Chickasaw County in Mississippi. At the time Ida Mae was alive, there were segregated restrooms, bar stools, and even separate Bibles for blacks and whites to swear on in court. Blacks couldnt shake hands with white people unless the white person made the first gesture. Black drivers had to wait for white drivers to pass at intersections. As evident, the Jim Crow laws directed every aspect of southern life.

Image Via Library of Congress

When Ida Mae was 16, she married George Gladney, a quiet man whose persistent courting finally won Ida Maes heart.

They went to work on Edd Pearsons plantation picking cotton. It was painful, back-breaking work which they did all day. They lugged sacks of cotton, which could weigh upwards of 100 pounds, across the fields until exhaustion.

After Mr. Edd brutally and unfairly beat Georges cousin, George and Ida Mae realized that they had to leave that place. It was incredibly dangerous as they could be punished or killed for any misstep. Even though Mr. Edd was an unusually fair boss, he had still wielded his white privilege over Joe.

They notified Mr. Edd and prepared to leave for Milwaukee to join Ida Maes sister, Irene.

George Swanson Starling, Eustis, Florida

As a young child, George saw his grandfather get swindled out of his pay as a sharecropper. The white planters kept the books, and black sharecroppers werent allowed to question the figures. He learned from an early age that his world was unfair and he needed to look out for himself.

George did well in school and even completed two years of college at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical State College in Tallahassee. His father, however, didnt see any value in college.

When Georges father refused to send him back to college, George married a woman named Inez Cunningham to spite his father. The decision would haunt him for the rest of his life.

George began work as a picker at orange farms. Climbing ladders to reach the fruit was difficult and dangerous work. Even worse, pickers were often short-changed in payment. Even the workers who were educated enough to know their pay and their debt couldnt have argue with the foreman.

When WWII was roaring, there was a labor shortage in the U.S. George began leading bargaining sessions with the foremen. He and other workers refused to pick fruit unless they were paid the demanded price.

George stirred up so much trouble in the groves that the grove owners plotted to take George out. Instead, George fled to New York to save himself from the murderous owners.

Robert Pershing Foster, Monroe, Louisiana

Pershing Foster was born into a family of high achievers. Pershings father was the principal of the Monroe Colored High, his mother was a school teacher, one of his brothers was a star athlete while the other was a doctor.