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The Warmth Of Other Suns is the story of how and why millions of Black Americans left the South between 1915 and 1970 to escape the brutality of the Jim Crow Laws and find safety, better pay, and more freedom in what is known today as The Great Migration.
The Warmth Of Other Suns is the story of how and why millions of Black Americans left the South between 1915 and 1970 to escape the brutality of the Jim Crow Laws and find safety, better pay, and more freedom in what is known today as The Great Migration.
You might be little surprised that your US History class didn’t study this big migration. Why did we barely touch on this topic that affected our history so greatly?
Wilkerson says that there are a few reasons for this. One of the main reasons is that it wasn’t one single unified movement. These black southerners didn’t think of themselves as part of a movement because many of them had their own complex reasons for moving.
Some of them were tired of being second-class. Others felt scared of racial violence. And some went for the promises of job prospects or tales of freedom. But the most dominant reason they wanted to leave was to escape the racist Jim Crow laws.
After the abolishment of slavery in 1865, whites came up with different ways to keep blacks from using their newly won freedoms. These laws banned them from going to the same schools or shops as white people, for example. It also gave whites an excuse to mob lynch blacks.
Another factor that influenced the migration was World War I. The war caused a huge labor shortage in the North. This meant there was a big recruitment of black workers who would work for cheaper from the South. This peaked again during World War II.
Ida Mae lived on a farm with her family in Mississippi. In 1928, she married a fellow farmer named George and the young couple began their family and started as sharecroppers. Sharecroppers were people employed by a farmer and harvested crops in return for a place to live. This was a popular practice in the South, and unfortunately, it kept blacks indebted to plantation owners. Though the sharecroppers received pay at the end of the season, the farmer would make charges for what they “owed.” This included anything he felt the need to tack on. In the end, they often ended up with no pay. George and Ida Mae were fortunate to receive a small amount of money at the end of the year from their employer. But with the Great Depression in full swing, they soon found it hard to provide for their family. Which now also included two young kids. But the tipping point came in 1937 when George’s cousin was accused of stealing a white family’s turkeys and he was brutally beaten by a mob of white men. Though he miraculously survived the incident, he…
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Get the complete summary in the appThe Great Migration is an interesting and neglected piece of US history that involved many purposes and destinations.
Ida Mae and her family’s move from the South for better pay and safety is just one story of many in The Great Migration.
Chicago became Ida Mae’s eventual home, but moving didn’t change her life like she had hoped.
"The Warmth Of Other Suns" is a strong fit if you want practical ideas around culture, history, politics, especially themes like the great migration is an interesting and neglected piece of us history that involved many purposes and destinations; ida mae and her family’s move from the south for better pay and safety is just one story of many in the great migration. The MinuteRead summary distills these concepts into a focused read, whether you're deciding whether to buy the book or applying its lessons at work.
Isabel Wilkerson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Humanities Medal, is the author the critically acclaimed New York Times bestsellers The Warmth of Other Suns, and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. Her first book, The Warmth of Other Suns, tells the story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the Lynton History Prize fro…
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