The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

My Kindle is doing a great job of recommending books to me based on my reading patterns, and this book was a great example.  I never would have searched this book out, but with almost a 5 star rating I couldn't turn it down.

It added some rich texture to my understanding of the 20th century and the plight of Black America.  Neither the Civil War nor the Restoration produced civil rights for blacks living in the South.  Discrimination, Jim Crow laws and lynchings were simple facts of life with no end in sight.

I was astounded with the absurdity of it all, especially with Wilkerson's explicit detailing of real life stories.  One that sticks out in my mind was a black soldier returning from WWI who was beaten up at a train station and told that he wasn't worthy of wearing the uniform.  

And lynchings were not just hangings as I previously believed.  They hanging was often preceded with prolonged torture sessions of unimaginable cruelty.

But the War began what Wilkerson has labeled The Great Migration, the gradual, persistent outpouring of blacks from the American South from the 1910s through the 1970s.

The War led to severe labor shortages in the North and West that created a vacuum of labor from the South to dozens of cities.  And the higher incomes and milder discrimination experienced by the pioneers in the movement created a domino effect.  Gradually millions left.

And although their lives were often much improved after the migration, they were not easy.  Subtler forms of prejudice still existed.  The "rules" of discrimination were harder to detect than in the Jim Crow South, which often resulted in sudden, sharp examples of hatred that couldn't be predicted.

The book chronicles three individuals who migrated to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles respectively, detailing their lives over several decades with meticulous detail.  Each of their experiences differed widely, but the range of their lives spelled out the dilemma they faced and the results of their decisions to migrate.

A wonderful read about a difficult subject, but one that I'm glad I undertook.