V’s Reviews > The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration > Status Update

Isabel Wilkerson is dropping gems and the text is surprisingly aware for the times it was published in and the NYT gave their seal of approval.

“…carried out by disaffected whites against groups perceived as threats to their survival…riots would become to the North what lynchings we’re to the South, each a display of uncontained rage by put-upon people directed toward the scapegoats of their condition.”

Okay so I knew that Irish immigrants in America at one point were considered non-white, but I feel like in modern times people take that combined with the fact that Ireland supports Palestine as proof they aren’t racist or that they are allies when that’s not historically or currently true.

I used to live about 20 miles from the border with Beloit, WI and I never would have guessed it was part of the Great Migration. History is all around us.

Some parts of racism just sound extremely time consuming and expensive to maintain…

“They had a habit of recycling the names of beloved kinpeople…Out of the confusion it created, children got nicknames…which after repeated use meant nobody knew anybody’s given name until they got married or died. It left mourners at southern funerals not knowing for sure who was in the casket unless the preacher called out “Junebug” in the eulogy. ‘Oh, that’s Junebug that died!’” 😂literally

I see Darfur mentioned in this book (2009) comparing the distance travelled by Black Americans & Sudanese as refugees to escape oppression. So the war in Sudan has been going on for at least 16 years…I remember #BlueForSudan but vaguely know what it’s about. I need more info; whenever there’s been ongoing instability in a region, there’s usually someone behind it after the region’s resources…

The Chicago Defender—a still active 120 year old Black owned and operated newspaper—had copies of their newspapers confiscated by police in Mississippi to stop the Black diaspora from communicating with each other and spreading news about the Great Migration. And yet we still prevailed. My family and other Black families in Chicago, NYC, LA, Oakland, Philly, Detroit, and other Northern cities are proof.

The fact that well known white newspapers (& some plantation owners) admitted Black people were the economic bedrock of the South, but were tired of being robbed, raped, terrorized, and killed proves that people being “a product of their time” is a myth. They knew it was wrong when they did it and they did it anyway. It’s why I support the seizure of their descendants assets to be appropriated as reparations.

Wait a minute! Pershing Foster was Ray Charles’ personal doctor 🤯

“Pershing did now know where he would end up or how. But he knew at that moment that he would never live in another country Jim Crow town again. He would do what it took to get as far away as he could. ‘That bug got in me,’ Pershing would later say. ‘I wanted, I wanted to get out.’”

This is exactly how it feels living in oppressive places; there’s a drive to get out.