![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() None of this is ground-breaking stuff, but it was always something that I vaguely knew without ever thinking much about. What they found was a new set of hardships that, cold as their reception was, usually represented an improvement over the lynchings and Jim Crow culture of the South. They sought better wages, equitable treatment, and the freedom to live and work where they pleased. The resulting demographic shifts were seismic: the black population in states like Mississippi and South Carolina decreased by more than a third, while that of Northern cities like Chicago and Detroit increased ten-fold in the space of a few decades. In the early to mid- twentieth century, millions of African-Americans departed the deep South, where many still worked as sharecroppers on the same plantations on which their ancestors slaved, to seek a better life in the metropolises of the North. It tells a story that most of us know tangentially but whose true scale and historical importance are appreciated by few. Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns ought to be required reading for all Americans, black or otherwise. ![]()
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