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www.mybaycity.com February 27, 2015
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Author Isabel Wilkerson, left, takes a break from book signing to pose with Juliet Lawrence of Dow Chemical.

AUTHOR DAZZLES: Book-lovers Throng Isabel Wilkerson, "Warmth of Other Suns"

Her Theory of What Happened to Detroit and Other Declining Northern Cities

February 27, 2015       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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Two students manned a long table with piles of books when I arrived at the Malcolm Field Theater at Saginaw Valley State University on Wednesday night.

"I'll wait and get my book later," I told them, figuring that would be easier than hanging on to the 650 page "Warmth of Other Suns," in which Isabel Wilkerson documents "The Great Migration."

Every reporter, every historian, every novelist in the last century -- except Ms. Wilkerson -- has missed the tale of the movement of six million blacks from the South into northern cities from World War I to the 1960s.

Called "the greatest unreported story in history," the 2010 book won for her the Pulitzer Prize and a host of honors.

"They may be all gone," the male student warned me. "That's OK, I'll take my chances," I replied dismissively, thinking "Sure, that huge pile of books, plus boxes in back of the table, would never sell out."

A huge image of Isabel was projected on the screen, her smiling face quietly exuding confidence, as if an image could do that. Little knots of folks whispered among themselves as if she was already in the room.

The handful of people attending the talk didn't really begin to grow until 6:50 p.m. Then, "holy cow," I looked around and the place was filling up fast. Most of the crowd was white, I estimated.

When Isabel was introduced, her presence filled the room dominating even her own image on the screen.

The fact that she has presented all over the world quickly became apparent. Her words flowed smoothly, magnificently, transfixing the audience.

The confidence she exuded was perhaps due in part to the 1,200 interviews she had conducted with emigrants, and their descendants, over 15 years of research into what she described as "the magnificent phenomenon that so changed our country."

How six million people fled the South and settled in northern cities is the over-simplified explanation of Ms. Wilkerson's epic project. But that word, "epic," is appropriate to describe the transformation of a people who might never have achieved their potential; the Stevie Wonders, Berry Gordys, Diana Rosses, Toni Morrisons and Jesse Owenses who might never have been born had their parents not migrated, met and matched.

"What I didn't realize for a long time was that the Great Migration was not about migration, but about freedom -- and how far people were willing to go to get it," she asserted.

They were fleeing a caste system, an artificial hierarchy so arcane Alabama had a law against blacks playing checkers with whites and courtrooms had black bibles for defendants to swear on. She called it "a suffocating world" about which today's high school students, learning of it, are incredulous. "They cannot conceive how and why human being could do such things to each other," she exclaimed.

The migrating blacks often had to fight at both ends of the road. Some were prevented from buying train tickets, or had them torn up by hostile white Southerners who feared losing cheap labor. At the terminus they were not welcomed and often faced opposition to their presence that sometimes escalated to violence.

One train of thought was particularly significant to Michigan: what happened to Detroit? Why had one of the nation's greatest cities gone to unimaginable wrack and ruin?

OK, maybe two million blacks came to Detroit from the South, mostly from Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee (folks from certain states favored certain northern regions). But in Detroit, as in Chicago, Cleveland and other metropolises, landlords got fat on people who had to pay high rents for crowded apartments or be on the street.

So, according to Ms. Wilkerson, the stage was set for poverty and degradation, and ultimately decay of the neighborhoods where blacks were able to settle. Detroit was undoubtedly the epitome of that process.

Jobs that were plentiful and accessible at first, like during the First World War when the military emptied the factories, after the war became scarce. Blacks were relegated to the least desirable jobs, like pouring hot metal in foundries. Unemployment was another scourge causing black areas of inner cities to deteriorate under mass poverty.

A particularly telling point made by Ms. Wilkerson involved the opposition of northern and eastern European immigrants to blacks in "their" neighborhoods. "The protests were mounted by people who had been in the same circumstances themselves -- immigrants foreign to the cities they entered. These were the same kind of people."

I did not wait the hour or more it would have taken to get Isabel's signature on her book. I'm sure they would have been all gone anyway. So, we learn as we live, as the philosophers say.

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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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