The Warmth of Other Suns - Essay Example

History and Political Science, Essay Topic: The Warmth of Other Suns. Introduction: Isabel Wilkerson in her book, “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of Americas Great Migration.” deals extensively with the era of black migration in America, to the urban North and West during the World War I and in the early 1970s and the crying issues that confronted blacks. Joe W. Trotter writes, “Over the past decades, scholars have produced a growing range of local and regional case studies of black population movement from the onset of the international slave trade through the late twentieth century.

” The stories in the book reveal the inhuman atrocities committed against the black population. Trotter writes about the closeness of Isabel Wilkerson to the subject and her deep involvement in the stories which provide a new understanding as to why the Southerners opted for the new life in the strife-torn cities far away from their homes. The book contains more than one thousand two hundred real life stories of trials and tribulations of black individuals, the untold stories of American history.

Gene Dattel in the review of the book discusses this serious issue from a slightly different perspective. He quotes from the book, “We’re the ones that killing ourselves.” (493)When about six million black people migrated to the North, it created a national level problem, not the regional one. The picture was not rosy for the migrants. Many of the top black leaders were disappointed by the attitude of blacks and their involvement in the dark sides of life. According to the observation of Ida Mae Bandon Gladney, one of the migrants to the North, “Chicago’s black ghetto had become a cesspool of crime, drugs and dilapidated neighborhoods.

It was also Chicago that frustrated Dr. Martin King Jr.’s attempt to bring the civil rights movement to the North in 1966.” The author advocates introspection for the blacks and opines that they are in a way responsible for their plight.Conclusion The book connects well to the volatile social conditions in America, of the 1960s and throws light on the tensions within the relationship of blacks and whites. But the author is unable to provide tangible solutions to the century old problems confronting the blacks, though they get full legal protection under the American Constitution.

Works Cited Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of Americas Great Migration. Vintage; Reprint edition, October 4, 2011Articles:Joe W. Trotter,Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaDoi:10.1093/jahist/jar104Gene Dattel, (New York City)The North Carolina Historical Review,Volume LXXXVIII Number 4.October 2011