ipl-logo

Warmth Of Other Suns By Isabel Wilkerson: Summary

1638 Words7 Pages

Isabel Wilkerson, noteworthy author of The Warmth of Other Suns, displays literary prowess and insightful knowledge of the plight of African Americans in both her debut novel and myriad journalism and reporting entries. On multiple occasions, Wilkerson’s abilities in journalism garnered attention from universities and award committees, earning her the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing and the George Polk award for coverage and research on the Great Migration, as well as allowing her to lead seminars and hold positions of high esteem at universities such as Harvard, Emory, and Princeton. In addition to being the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for individual reporting, Wilkerson and her parents lived and participated in the Great Migration themselves. Hence, it will come as no surprise to hear that her claims within The Warmth of Other Suns present themselves as spectacularly accurate. Wilkerson proposes that the Great Migration altered the cultural, economic, and social history of America dramatically, …show more content…

Due to the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and National Origins Act of 1924, international immigration to America became limited to a precious few thousand people because of common fears of communism and increased prejudice from native-born Americans against foreigners. While Americans believed they could control the influx and migration of foreign-born people during this time, they possessed little to no control of internal migration within their country. Considered legal, natural-born citizens of the United States, African American retained full ability to migrate throughout the country as they pleased, provided they could find the finances for it. Though the most basic of principles for internal and international migration matched fluidly, each group’s ability to complete its migration varied immensely between places of

Show More
Related
494 Words | 2 Pages

It has been over fifty years since slavery had ended in the South with the enactment of the 13th amendment, leaving all former slaves and African-Americans free. The Great Migration, which started in the 1910s, was seen by African-Americans as a new hope, a chance to leave what they saw as the restricting rural South to find better opportunities, jobs, and the private life in the North. In 1917, when most of the migrations occurred, ten-year-old Rubie Bond and her parents left Mississippi to travel to Wisconsin. Fifty years later, in “Beloit Bicentennial Oral History Project” (1976), Rubie Bond was interviewed as part of Beloit College Archives’ project to document the history of the Great Migration. In her interview, Bond recollected why her family and many others left the South.

Read More
504 Words | 3 Pages

In Part Three of The Warmth of Other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson uses the poem Exodus from The Cleveland Advocate and an excerpt from Richard Wright's 12 Million Black Voices to set the tone and context for the harrowing experiences of African Americans during the Great Migration. These words are appropriate because they depict the desperation and determination of African Americans seeking to escape the oppressive conditions of the South. For example, the excerpt from 12 Million Black Voices states, "They packed their belongings in orange crates, said their goodbyes, and went off to cities...," highlighting the resolve of those who embarked on this journey. The manner in which Ida Mae Gladney and George Starling leave the South underscores the

Read More
196 Words | 1 Pages

Jacob Lawerence’s “Migration Series” encapsulates the black perspective of a massive migration in the early to mid 1900s. The movement of African Americans moving from the rural South to cities located in the North and West searching for opportunities and equality. It was a time of reinvention, through his multiple panel series, Lawerence showcases this movement between worlds. Through his panels Lawerence tells a story, a story of movement and change, but also one of hardship, violence, and discrimination. I picked the last panel of the Migration Series, No. 60, captioned, “ And the migrants kept coming.”

Read More
100 Words | 1 Pages

The “Black Great Migration” represents one of the greatest social, political, and economic alterations in American history.

Read More
719 Words | 3 Pages

Did the benefits of the immigration boom in the late 1800s outweigh the drawbacks? During the 1800s, many people migrated to urban areas because they wanted jobs and land. Many people thought that migrating to urban areas would be like a perfect dream, however they were disappointed when they realized that the benefits of migration did not outweigh the drawbacks. During the late 1800s, millions of immigrants were coming to the United States. Most of the immigrants came from Europe.

Read More
704 Words | 3 Pages

In Zora Neale Hurston’s short story “Sweat” and her essay “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” the African American social group is being represented in many ways. The texts have similar ways that African Americans are represented for the time period. The African Americans or “colored people” are represented in an aspect that comes from the author's point of view. The African Americans are represented as being unbothered, growing up in a closed community, playing the game with whites, and optimistic.

Read More
1236 Words | 5 Pages

Nella Larsen, one of the major woman voices of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, when many African American writers were attempting to establish African–American identity during the post-World War I period. Figures as diverse as W.E.B. Du Bois, Alain Locke, A. Philip Randolph and Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston along with Nella Larsen sought to define a new African American identity that had appeared on the scene. These men and women of intellect asserted that African Americans belonged to a unique race of human beings whose ancestry imparted a distinctive and invaluable racial identify and culture. This paper aims at showcasing the exploration of African American ‘biracial’ / ‘mulatto’ women in White Anglo Saxon White Protestant America and their quest for an identity with reference to Nella Larsen’s Quicksand.

Read More
860 Words | 4 Pages

The period between 1865 and 1910 in America was a time of not only great pain and destruction but also great transition and perseverance. Various ethnic groups and different demographics suffered immense discrimination and tragedy, such as different movements put in place to put an end to different Native American peoples or the lack of gender equality during everyday life for women and men of any race/ethnicity. On top of this, as some corporations came onto a great amount of wealth and prosperity, millions of the country’s working class population, which soon included a second wave of European immigrants, lived under poverty with seemingly no social mobility. Despite these negatives, there were still some benefits to come out of this time

Read More
383 Words | 2 Pages

The articles Shut the Door, the Chinese Exclusion Act, and A Modest Proposal all pertain to population control and solutions to overpopulation within a nation’s borders, whether it applies to those within their boundaries or those seen as a difficulty outside of them. Shut the Door and the Chinese Exclusion Act were created to limit immigration into the United States from outside countries, while A Modest Proposal outlined a solution to overpopulation and poverty within its own citizens. All three of these articles contained what would be controversy in today’s society, although they may have been seen as viable solutions during the time period they were proposed in. Shut the Door was a speech given by a senator in 1924 on the congress floor which proposed to, simply, “shut the door” to outside immigrants and “Americanize” the ones already within the borders. Much like the Chinese Exclusion Act, this proposal was designed to keep out

Read More
878 Words | 4 Pages

In 1862 the U.S. made a law so that Chinese people could not come into the U.S. and the reason for that was because they were discriminated against and believed that they would take their jobs. (Immigration to the united states) In this essay, I will discuss how immigration

Read More
1403 Words | 6 Pages

In one of Octavia Butler’s most well known books, Dana a struggling black author is yanked back in time to the antebellum south multiple times to save the life of her white slave-owning ancestor Rufus Weylin. When literary critics examined this piece of science fiction, many were motivated to write papers on a myriad of subjects in the book’s less than 300 pages. Scholarship on Octavia Butler’s Kindred has evolved from primarily focusing on how the novel connects its readers to the past to addressing more modern concerns of how African American culture and people are represented and viewed, as well as third wave feminism. One of the earliest scholarly articles on Octavia Butler’s Kindred is Lisa Long discussing how unknowable history is for

Read More
1707 Words | 7 Pages

In the early 19th century, millions of immigrants from Europe had traveled to the United States to escape difficulties faced in their native lands such as poverty and religious persecution. Italian, German, Irish, and many other eastern European immigrants sought the prosperous and wealthy lifestyle advertised in the land of opportunity, the United States. However, after settling down they often faced the difficulties they had fled from as well as sentiments of prejudice and mistrust from the American people. Most immigrants were discriminated against due to their religious beliefs as well as their language barriers which fostered the beliefs that they were intellectually inferior to Americans.

Read More
279 Words | 2 Pages

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a large portion of Americans were restricted from civil and political rights. In American government in Black and White (Second ed.), Paula D. McClain and Steven C. Tauber and Vanna Gonzales’s power point slides, the politics of race and ethnicity is described by explaining the history of discrimination and civil rights progress for selective groups. Civil rights were retracted from African Americans and Asian Americans due to group designation, forms of inequality, and segregation. These restrictions were combatted by reforms such as the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, the Fifteenth amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, etc. Although civil and political

Read More
355 Words | 2 Pages

Until the 20th century many people were not given all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The rich and the caucasian men were given all of the rights, the privileges, and the responsibilities. The African American men and women were slaves or very unwealthy. The Native American men and women had already been kicked off their land. They had to stay in their small pieces of land, that didn’t have anything they started with, like rich soil to grow maize or much water from streams.

Read More
255 Words | 2 Pages

Migrating to America was not easy back then as it is now. With America being a country with abundant of possibility and opportunity , people began to pursue the “American Dream” but entering a country of freedom had its setbacks, to be able to enter back then you had to come prepared to pass a medical examination that started the moment you arrived, and you were asked hundreds of questions for your tensions of being here in the United States of America. From back then and the time being now the process of immigration has changed dramatically. the whole idea of migrating to America was to escape from something constricting their right weather it was from religion or an unfair government, but getting here took some guts. the author writes

Read More

More about Warmth Of Other Suns By Isabel Wilkerson: Summary

Related Topics

Open Document