Tag: the great migration

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Book Review: The Warmth of Other Suns…Now, Go Ahead, Read It!

 

Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns is a great read. I know I’ve said this already, but I want you to read it, now, if you haven’t already. Then I want you to tell me what you think of it. Seriously.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a compelling account of the great migration of African Americans who fled the South for Northern cities in the early to late-mid 20th century. The migrants whose stories are shared were driven out of the South by the humiliations and horrors of Jim Crow and drawn Northward by stories, many … Read more “Book Review: The Warmth of Other Suns…Now, Go Ahead, Read It!”

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Refueling, Reading, Learning

I’m taking the week off of serious blogging, or at least I’m trying to, mainly by escaping into books. I tend to read books in bunches, often matching fiction and non-fiction covering related subject matter. This week’s reading list is no exception.

Among my books is a collection of poetry by Robinson Jeffers. I picked up the collection at the recommendation of John O’Neal, a brilliant playwright of the Civil Rights Movement and one of the architects of the historic Freedom Schools. He seduced me into reading Jeffers by describing poems written about Tor House and Hawk Tower… Read more “Refueling, Reading, Learning”

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The Great Migration of the 21st Century

Ta-Nehisi Coates published an article this week that speaks to an idea I’ve been pondering lately. After finishing Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns, a brilliant historical account of the Great Migration of African Americans out of the South and into Northern and Western cities in the early through mid-late twentieth century, Coates wrote,

…What becomes clear by the end of Wilkerson’s book is that America’s response to the Great Migration was to enact a one-sided social contract. America says to its citizens, “Play by the rules, and you will enjoy the right to compete.” The black migrants did … Read more “The Great Migration of the 21st Century”