Hello, Fellow Readers–
What a year we’ve had, reprehensible in so many unspeakable, unforgivable ways.
No stranger to correspondingly horrific times, Isabel Wilkerson gives an amazing account of an event–a movement, of glacial proportions–of which many Americans have only a minimal appreciation. Beginning in and around 1915, the slow and steady migration of millions of Black Americans from the southern United States to the often inhospitable north began in response to two leading causes. First and foremost was the nearly universal refusal of many Americans in the south states to recognize the tenets of the Emancipation Proclamation, choosing instead to implement Jim Crow laws and practices to control, abuse and subjugate black Americans. Kudos to both those black Americans who held their ground in the south as well as those who undertook the arduous journey north. The second leading factor in this migration, as Wilkerson notes, was the demand for a robust workforce in the north to support the war effort.
I cannot add anything to Wilkerson’s comprehensive description of the injustices of this time–injustices which impacted the lives of millions of black Americans over a span of more than fifty years–except to offer my profound apologies on the part of those responsible. Chronicling the lives of three black Americans in particular–Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster–Wilkerson humanizes this vast migration from the intolerant south to the, sadly, sometimes only marginally more tolerant north. Join her in celebrating the lives of these three people who stand in place of the millions who travelled alongside them.
Please read this novel. You will be humbled. You will be informed. And you will be awed by the integrity, strength and courage of those who participated in this enormous undertaking.
Julie Krantz 