Huntsville-Madison County Public Library discussion

The saga of the domestic immigrants


I must confess to a starling ignorance of the Great Migration. I knew the black people in the South moved to the North but never realized the scale of this migration—six million from 1915 to 1970. What is even more inexcusable is that it's really a no-brainer. Why would someone be content to stay in a horribly repressive, restrictive, dangerous environment if they thought there was a chance that their circumstances might improve if they moved to a different geographical location? Well, actually there were many reasons people did not leave, not the least of which is that many people prefer the known horrors of what they've experienced since birth to the unknown possibilities of an alien environment. The pain of staying had to outweigh the risks of leaving to spur them into finally taking action. That is an underlying factor in most immigrants' fateful decisions.

Wilkerson narrowed down the list of living participants in the Great Migration from over 1,000 to three. By focusing on three, she has been able to make the saga very personal and yet reflect variations in circumstances and depict three of the common origin/destination routes. By choosing one from the 1930's, one from the 40's and one from the 50's, she can also acquire a broader chronological perspective than by depicting only one of them.

The oldest of the migrants is Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, who grew up in Chickasaw County, Mississippi, in the heart of cotton country. She married as she was expected to and she picked cotton as she was expected to as well, or attempted it. The average acceptable daily load was 100 pounds, which was virtually impossible for her. When you consider how light cotton is and imagine 100 pounds of it and think of how much cotton would have to be picked to come close to reaching that amount, it is staggering that anyone was ever able to accomplish it, especially in the hot sun, bent over perpetually for 10-12 hours every day except Sunday. The route she and her husband plotted was originally to go to Milwaukee where her older sister had gone. However, there were absolutely no opportunities there so they went back to the nearest large northern city, Chicago. This was in the middle of the Depression so the employment situation was bleak even for those who had lived there all their lives, so once you take into account the fact that the people that were already there, black as well as white, saw additional workers as a threat to their own job security the migrants encountered widespread hostile reactions at almost every turn.

The next migrant is George Starling, a fruit picker from the heart of the orange groves of central Florida. He had actually gone to two years of college before his father had to pull him out. He made two fateful, possibly unwise choices that determined the course of his life. He married an unstable girl primarily because his father did not approve of her and he agitated fruit workers to make vocal their demands for more reasonable pay. The situation grew so heated that he had to make a hasty departure after hearing that the crop owners were threatening to lynch him. His route headed toward Harlem, which had one of the most heavily concentrated black populations of any portion of New York. He became a baggage handler on the railroad, quite frequently heading back toward the area from which he had left.


The third migrant is Robert Pershing Foster, from Louisiana. His father was a high school principal that believed in as much education for his children as possible. Robert's older brother was already a doctor and would have been happy for Robert to share a family practice. Robert had his sights set on the west coast, particularly the glamorous Los Angeles. He married the daughter of the president of Atlanta University. But, despite his father-in-law's dismissal of the idea, Robert was determined to migrate to the west coast. He decided he would go on ahead and get settled, then send for his wife and children. He had made a few personal and professional connections and felt that they would help him gain a foothold in the big city where there were sure to be multiple opportunities. So he took it upon himself to drive from his parental home in Louisiana all the way to Los Angeles. What he did not anticipate was the number of obstacles making the trek extremely dangerous. He was forced to drive almost straight through because he couldn't find motels that would rent rooms to him. In addition to that, most of the territory through New Mexico and Arizona is solid desert and one can drive for hundreds of miles before finding a town or a rest stop. The desperation of his solo journey through long stretches of highway throughout the night is particularly palpable and harrowing.


Each of these people had to go through ordeals to make the journey, in some cases sneaking out at night or traveling to another town to depart where they would not be recognized. Their employers and the southern powers that be did all they could to stem the tide of departing cheap labor. Once they reached their destinations they encountered a succession of obstacles. The north in many cases carried prejudices that may not have been as obvious or blatant as their southern counterparts. Nonetheless, it was just as virulent, just a bit more sublimated.


Wilkerson provides abundant visual, exact imagery and anecdotes of a huge swath of individuals. She describes the economy that ruled Ida Mae's life:
'Above her was an entire economy she could not see but which ruled her days and determined the contours of her life. There were bankers, planters, merchants, warehouse clerks, fertilizer wholesalers, seed sellers, plow makers, mule dealers, gin owners. A good crop and a high price made not much impression on the material discomforts of Ida Mae's existence but meant a planter's wife could "begin to dream of a new parlor carpet and a piano"…Closer to home, closer than one dared to contemplate, there were Klansmen needing their white cotton robes and hoods.'


In supposedly more enlightened L.A. there were all white neighborhoods, with covenants that forbade the owners from selling to colored people. In the case of Dr. Beck, Robert Foster's mentor, with whom he lived when he first tried to get settled there, he and his family waited until after dark to move into their house but they had been spotted.
'That night, as they began unpacking, an orange light danced in front of the picture window. The palm tree on their manicured lawn was on fire. It was not unlike the crosses that burned in the South."


Each of the three primary characters has distinct personalities and reacts differently to their new circumstances. Ida Mae sees her neighborhood in Chicago transform from a community of largely law-abiding citizens like she and her husband to a den of prostitutes and drug dealers. Ida Mae never loses her Mississippi drawl or her homegrown habits although she seems possessed by an inner serenity that even affects her young neighbors. The dealers across the street call her "Grandma," treat her with respect and advise her when a particular area may not be safe to travel.


George Starling, despite his earlier ambitions for higher education, grows disillusioned over the ensuing decades as he realizes he will probably be a baggage handler for the rest of his life or until he retires. There is an invisible barrier toward any kind of real promotion. He does witness great changes over the next decades, from the turbulent civil rights era until after the Civil Rights Act is passed and Jim Crow finally begins to recede into the past. In the earlier years, he observes absurd, arbitrary barriers, such as in the Jim Crow era, when black passengers were herded into segregated cars until they crossed the Illinois border, then allowed to move to the previously white-only cars. This was for the journey north. For corresponding journeys south, the reverse process was implemented.


Robert Foster works harder than any of his white counterparts to build a trusted set of patients, particularly a group of people like him who moved from Monroe, Louisiana. He likes to gamble, wear gaudy clothes, goes to Vegas and resembles Sammy Davis Jr. He also has celebrity patients, such as Ray Charles. He is rapacious in maintaining a particular lifestyle for him, his wife and daughters. He always feels compelled to prove himself, to offset an inbred inferiority complex.


Wilkerson distills these people's entire lives by straddling decades that cover most of the 20th century, lending a truly epic scope. In depicting the biographies of these people, she provides the dignity they deserve for their courage and persistence. The book does include a good bit of repetition. She will reiterate a point she made about 200 pages earlier. This did not particularly bother me because I felt that she was driving the point home by giving it greater emphasis. The book is a bit longer than it may have needed to be, perhaps by 20-30 pages. This is a minor issue, however, as the overarching effect is so powerful.


One of the reviewers says that Wilkerson does for the Great Migration what Steinbeck did for the Oakies. One characteristic this book shares with 'The Grapes of Wrath' is that it personifies this great movement. We can relate to these individuals with more immediacy than we could respond to generalities and statistics, although there is necessarily a bit of that. We feel the righteous indignation as depictions of lynchings and mutilations hit us with mind-boggling horror. This book took 15 years from initial contacts with interview subjects to publication. All that effort shows in this meticulously researched, tremendously moving book. A novelist could not have surpassed what Wilkerson has accomplished here.

This sounds like a fascinating read. Thanks, Brian!

Thanks, Jim!