Its purpose was to keep Black people subordinate to white people in every sphere of life. Part Five: More North and West Than Southįor a century after the Civil War, Southern state governments devoted vast resources to creating the elaborate system of legal segregation commonly known as Jim Crow.Part Four: The Fullness of the Migration.

Part Three: The Appointed Time of Their Coming.

Part Two: Robert Joseph Pershing Foster.

Part One: The Great Migration, 1915–1970.

What aspects of this story have you experienced yourself? Were any of your family members part of the Great Migration? How can white people unpack their own complicity in the conditions that led to the Great Migration? Read Isabel Wilkerson’s absolutely amazing and engrossing book, The Warmth of Other Suns, and sign up to join our in-person discussion on Sunday, July 9 at 11:30 a.m. She shows us how communities responded to this migration. She tells us of the racism they faced and the sacrifices they had to make. She tells us their struggles and their triumphs. Against the sweeping drama of this migration, she focuses on three people who search, hope and dream of a better life. Wilkerson’s book provides us with an understanding of the Great Migration (1915 – 1970) which led millions of Black people to leave the south and move north and west for what they hoped would be a better life.

Little did I know that what I saw as a young girl would be detailed so well in Isabel Wilkerson’s first book, The Warmth of Other Suns. At the time that response made no sense to me, because I didn’t yet understand the racism that was behind it, but it did leave me deeply troubled. She told me that the farmers wanted to drive the Black kids out – they didn’t want to pay for their education. Once I asked my mother why the community tolerated such a poor-quality education system. Worse, only half of my freshman class stayed around to graduate.

My high school had no cafeteria, little maintenance budget (the roof started to fall in after I graduated), the books were falling apart and many of the teachers were those that couldn’t get better paying jobs in Fresno City Schools. It was a small country high school that included some of the predominantly Black areas next to Fresno. I grew up in California and attended Washington Union High School located outside of Fresno, California in the 1960s. A book recommendation on behalf of BSPC’s Racial Justice Initiative:

The other suns