Isabel Wilkerson: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

A writer for The Guardian recently wrote this about the book and author: One of 2010's most feted books has been The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, a powerful history of the 20th-century migration of African-American families from America's deeply segregated south. Epic in the scale of its hurt and hope, it tells the largely untold story of a people fleeing a society of segregation and lynchings to start more fulfilling lives in Chicago, New York and the west coast. In these anonymous sprawls, racial prejudice may have been alive and well in people's heads but the crucial difference was that it wasn't sanctioned by policy and pulpit. Read that Guardian article here.

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Tales from 'The Great Migration' from The Takeaway: Story of the Day by feedback@thetakeaway.org (Public Radio International and WNYC Radio)

The massive migration of black Americans from the South to the North in the early part of last century changed the social and cultural landscape of America forever. Six million African Americans eventually left the South around 1920. Before then, 90 percent of all African Americans lived in the south. By 1970, nearly half lived elsewhere in the country. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson wrote a more comprehensive history of this mass movement…to remind all of us that it continued well through the civil rights movement. Her book is called The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. (This interview originally aired September 15, 2010.)

Listen to the full Takeaway podcast here. See also: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, The Grace of Silence: A Memoir, The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How It Changed America, 12 Million Black Voices

Charlie Rose's Wednesday, October 13, 2010 Conversation with with Isabel Wilkerson

CHARLIE ROSE: Isabel Wilkerson is here. In 1994 she became the first
African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism. Her new book
"The Warmth of Other Suns," was 15 years in the making. It chronicles one
of the great untold stories of American history, the decades-long migration
of black citizens who fled the south for northern and western cities in
search of a better life.

I am very pleased to have Isabel Wilkerson at this table to talk about
this extraordinary, epic story. It is almost like if there’s a great story
waiting to be told, sometimes there’s a convergence with the perfect author
to write that story, and here it is in this book, "The Warmth of Other
Suns." So, welcome.

ISABEL WILKERSON: Thank you, great to be here.

Read the full transcript here. See the full interview here. See also: The Grace of Silence: A Memoir