Editor’s note: First of all, I never considered six million African-Americans relocating from the “Jim Crow” south to the industrial north and west from 1930 to 1960 as one of the great migrations, but of course it was. Wilkerson’s detail of three people’s lives who were among that migration is also followed common geographical patterns: the book’s Floridian heads for New York City; its Mississippi sharecropper makes her life in Chicago and Dr.Robert Foster of Louisiana heads west for Los Angeles. The details can be disturbing as they are actual life stories yet the book reads like a fascinating novel. It also reminds me of America’s past and many developing countries’ current absurd racist policies.
Excerpt: “Bob Foster nursed ancient wounds until the day he died. But he would have had it no other way.”