Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Warmth of Other Suns, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Migration and Freedom
History, Memory, and Identity
The Legacy of the Migration
The Economics of Racism
Love and Family
Decision, Consequence, and Regret
Summary
Analysis
The Great Migration impacted virtually all Americans, from its participants and their descendants to the Black Southerners who didn’t migrate (but had relatives who did) and the white people who interacted with Black migrants. Social scientists have long argued that the Great Migration was a failure, as migrants merely traded rural backwardness for urban poverty. But census records disprove this idea: Black migrants were more educated, socially stable, and economically successful than both Black Northerners and Black Southerners who stayed in place.
In her Epilogue, Wilkerson explicitly connects her protagonists’ stories to key sociological conclusions about the Great Migration as a whole. In particular, she focuses on correcting popular stereotypes and misunderstandings about the Migration, especially those from 20th century researchers who were often more interested in the specific problems that migrants encountered in the North than the overall context of their migration. For instance, Wilkerson points out that many Black migrants and their descendants did end up in impoverished, high-crime areas, but she notes that this has largely been the result of government policies, and she emphasizes that their lives were still better than they would have been if they hadn’t migrated.
Themes
Every major Northern city’s first Black mayor was either a migrant or a migrant’s child. So were three of the most influential jazz musicians ever (Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and John Coltrane). These successes support the scholarly consensus that migrants are more resourceful, determined, and resilient than non-migrants. The longer migrants spent in the North, the more likely they were to suffer poverty and violence. This shows that these problems came from the cities where migrants went, and not from migrants themselves. The Great Migration also made U.S. cities more hospitable for immigrants of color, boosted income for migrant families no matter their level of education, and contributed to the civil rights movement that finally ended Jim Crow.
Wilkerson points out the obvious evidence of migrant success, which researchers who are focused on more narrow issues often overlook. It’s telling that most of the leading Black figures in 20th-century American cultural and political life were migrants—it suggests that, even if the Great Migration had some unintended consequences, it largely fulfilled its primary goal of helping migrants live freer, more successful lives. Wilkerson emphasizes that this happened for two different reasons: the “migrant advantage” (migrants’ tendency to be more ambitious, educated, and resourceful), and the fact that life in the North and West gave migrants freedoms and resources that they wouldn’t have had in the South.
Themes
Each of the book’s three protagonists adjusted to their surroundings differently. Robert Foster embraced California and tried to forget about the South, even though this cut him off from his family and his roots. He used gambling, perfectionism, and attention-seeking to deal with his anxieties. George Starling, who left Florida to avoid being lynched, ultimately found a tenuous middle ground between his Southern roots and his Northern reality. Despite suffering deep poverty, Ida Mae Gladney built a strong community in Chicago and kept her Southern culture alive. She found spiritual fulfillment and ended up far happier than Robert or George.
Just like they belonged to different social classes and migrated to different places at different times, the book’s protagonists also reshaped their identities in very different ways after migrating. Wilkerson puts Ida Mae, George, and Robert on a spectrum—in that order—in terms of how much they stuck to their Southern identities or built new ones around their destination cities. But none of their approaches are inherently better than any other. Ida Mae might have turned out the happiest, but as Wilkerson’s analysis suggests, this is because of her strong community, rather than the fact that she specifically stuck to her Southern roots.
Themes
Scholars have also long debated how much factors like Jim Crow, lynching, the boll weevil pest crisis, and new cotton harvesting machines influenced migrants’ decisions. While none of these factors correlates perfectly with migration statistics, all of them clearly had some effect. The desire for freedom was another key factor—in fact, simply leaving the South was a way for migrants to affirm their freedom, seek better educational and economic opportunities for their children, and “pursue some version of happiness.”
Wilkerson doesn’t mean to suggest that the factors that she lists here weren’t important contributors to the Great Migration—on the contrary, she explores them at some length elsewhere in her book. Rather, the point she’s making here is that simply chalking the Great Migration up to the “push” factors that encouraged people to leave the South runs the risk of missing the most important part of the story: the human element, the sense in which the Great Migration was a free decision by a newly freed people who believed in their own capacity to build a better future.
Themes
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In a way, the Great Migration is just another version of the classic American immigration story: migrants formed enclaves in new cities, both carried on and modified their traditions, worked extra hard to move up, and experienced a generational disconnect with their children. Yet Black migrants were also always Americans. They were born citizens, and their ancestors had been in the U.S. for four centuries. Men of African descent actually founded Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. In historical hindsight, Wilkerson hopes, perhaps we will learn to see the Great Migration as the final step in Black Americans’ march toward freedom, a way of bringing the American Dream to life.
Wilkerson emphasizes the connection between the Great Migration, which she has portrayed as a tale of Black Americans collectively pursuing freedom and happiness, and popular ideas of American identity, which frequently revolve around these same concepts. Ultimately, this is part of a broader project of integrating Black history and identity into our core understanding of what it means to be American, in the same way as the “nation of immigrants” story about white Europeans has been. Indeed, for Wilkerson, this and the Great Migration are really two versions of the same story.
Themes
