The Warmth of Other Suns

the Migration by reading what has come to be the definitive text of the Great Migration, The

Warmth of Other Suns.

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

Wilkerson began writing The Warmth of Other Suns following the period of academic

and public interest during the late ’80s and early ’90s. Published 15 years later, in 2010, Warmth

of Other Suns is now one of the most widely read and cited books on the Great Migration and is

well-regarded in both academic circles and by everyday readers. Synthesizing decades of

scholarship into rich historical context, Wilkerson weaves the stories and experiences of three

migrants into a narrative history of the Great Migration. In her section “Notes on Methodology,”

Wilkerson is clear about how the book was intended to intervene in the history of the Migration:

1) to adjust the time frame beyond 1915-1940.

2) to expand the geographic understanding of the Migration beyond cities such as Chicago.

3) to convey an intimate history and expand the (albeit important) focus on demographics,

politics, economics, and sociology.

Before the publication of The Warmth of Other Suns, the First Great Migration received

the majority of scholarly attention and was often treated as the Migration in its entirety. Up until

that point, however, The Second Great Migration remained ill-defined. 36 Building upon the work

of the sociologist, Stewart Tolney, and arguing that the Migration continued until about 1975,

Wilkerson extends the length of the Migration beyond all pre-existing time frames. She also

moves beyond the jobs-driven characterization of the Migration, arguing that the Migration did

not end until the legislative victories of the Civil Rights Movement were implemented and

36 Wilkerson, Warmth of Other Suns, 13, 539.

enforced at a local level in the 1970s.37 Real World History has adopted Wilkerson’s timeframe

of the Migration, and the collection is comprised almost entirely of narrators who migrated

during this later period.

In contrast to other works in the field, The Warmth of Other Suns transforms the Great

Migration into a national narrative. Whereas previous works were regionally focused, or even

city-specific, Wilkerson sets out to tell the story of the Migration on a national scale and

chronicle the movement in its entirety.38 To that end, she equally positions the three major

streams of Migration: up the eastern seaboard, to the Midwestern cities, and to the West Coast.

She also acknowledges migration to “border cities” such as Washington, DC, by weaving her

own family history into the book.

Some of her interventions are less overt and more representational. While the literature

has been dominated by the archetype of sharecroppers (primarily men) migrating north to take

advantage of opportunities in the industrializing North, Wilkerson’s character selection pushes

back on this archetype. Collectively, her three protagonists represent different social classes,

genders, geographic locations, and educational experiences. And, all three leave the South for

different reasons. Ida Mae, a sharecropper, leaves in the 1930s both under the threat of violence

and in search of greater opportunity; George, a blue-collar worker who had received some

college education, leaves in the 1940s for fear of his life; Robert a middle-class doctor, leaves in

the 1950s in search of dignity and a place where he could live the life he wanted. Together, their

stories represent the diversity of the broader Migration experience.

37 Stewart Tolney, “The African American ‘Great Migration’ and Beyond,” Annual Review of Sociology 29, (2003): 210; Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, 539. 38 Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, 539-540.

Wilkerson also likens the southern migrant experience to an immigrant experience.

Historicizing the migration of Black Americans to areas of increased social, economic, and

personal freedom, Wilkerson situates this story within a larger, international narrative of human

experience. She also compares the experiences of Black migrants fleeing the South to those of

refugees and others fleeing genocide and political persecution, deftly transmitting the

significance of this migration and the depth of the oppression in the South to the reader.

While she is not the first to make this comparison, she uses this characterization to push

back against scholarship of the “ghetto model” era that pathologizes Black southern culture as a

causal factor in the proliferation of concentrated poverty in urban Black communities in the

North. Drawing upon the sociological analyses of Stewart Tolney, Wilkerson refutes this

characterization, likening southern migrants to immigrant communities to argue that they were

by many metrics better educated and more industrious than their northern counterparts.39

Wilkerson also situates her characters in ways that ground the Migration in the South.

Brief asides are interspersed throughout the book to provide historical contextualization for the

character-driven narrative in ways that maintain the connection to the South even after the

protagonists have arrived in the North. In chronicling the entire movement, the impact of the

Migration on the North and the South are kept as one cohesive story. While settling outside of

the South, the narrators maintain, to varying degrees, a connection to the region through familial

networks, visitation, and cultural connections. Building on Lewis’s intervention of needing to

expand the understanding of the Migration to include migration to southern cities and Clark-

Lewis’s positioning of DC as a migration city, Wilkerson, through her own family history,

situates DC in the context of the Great Migration on a national scale.

39 Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, 260-265.

As was discussed in Part I, one of the reasons Warmth of Other Suns is a useful teaching

tool is because of its narrative writing style and character-driven storyline. While Wilkerson

pulls on similar archives as the pre-existing literature, the bulk of her original research is in her

extensive oral history interviewing: conducting over 1,200 oral histories over a 15-year period.

In addition to that, this project weaves together historical, sociological, and economic research

and synthesizes much of the literature from all three categories of scholarship Trotter

delineates.40 As Wilkerson chronicles the Migration through the lives of these characters, she

breaks the book down into distinct parts which are used in the class to frame the students’ oral

history interviews:

1. “Beginnings” – Narrators’ life in the South, thereby embedding them in southern

community and kinship networks

2. “Exodus” – The decision to leave the South and the journey north, centering their

own decision-making process, and self-identified factors in that choice

3. “The Kinder Mistress” – Adjustment to life in the North, establishing themselves in

the city, building new communities, and their life in Washington.

4. “Aftermath” – The decades after the end of the Migration and the migrants’ lives as

older adults.

Building on Wilkerson’s work, it is our hope that this archive will be useful for exploring the

impact of the later decades of the Migration, particularly as it pertains to Washington, DC.

40 Referring back to the Race Relation Model (1920s-1950s), the “Ghetto” Model (1960s-1970s), and the Proletarian Model (1970s-1980s). Trotter, “Introduction,” in The Great Migration in Historical Perspective, 1-2.