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
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 1937. The Gladneys move into Ida Mae’s sister Irene’s living room. Like most migrants from Chickasaw County, Irene and her husband followed recruiters to Beloit, Wisconsin during World War I, then ended up in Milwaukee. Black workers replaced the European immigrants who stopped coming during the war—they took the dirtiest jobs around, usually in foundries and slaughterhouses. However, Ida Mae and George arrive during the Great Depression, when these jobs have mostly dried up, and the remaining few are reserved for white people. Yet Black migrants keep coming—they’re now a majority in the North Side neighborhood. Ida Mae is pregnant, and she decides that she wants to give birth at home in Mississippi, instead of in a northern hospital.
Ida Mae, George, and their family are free from Jim Crow, but they still face incredibly difficult conditions in their new home in the North. It’s understandable why Ida Mae would want to give birth in the familiar surroundings of Mississippi, instead of in the cold new city where she has landed. Irene and her husband joined the Great Migration in its earlier days, but World War I’s labor shortages are long gone, and Ida Mae and George have scant opportunities. In fact, the same racial hierarchy that keeps Black people poor in the South is doing the same in the North. The only difference is that it’s enforced through informal discrimination in the North, but a formal system of legal segregation in the South.
Themes
Harlem, Spring 1945. World War II is in full swing, so George Starling has no trouble finding a job in New York. Ironically, this job will send him back to the South: he’ll be an attendant on the railroad, including the Silver Meteor train that brought him to New York. But at least he gets to live in Harlem, New York’s most important Black enclave.
The difference between Ida Mae and George Gladney’s economic prospects in Milwaukee during the Great Depression and George Starling’s in New York during World War II is stark, mainly because they enter different labor markets. This shows how powerfully the nation’s overall economic situation shapes migrants’ experiences at different points in time. In the rest of the book, George’s job on the railroad will become a powerful symbol of the Great Migration: he gets to help others come north on the same train that saved him from lynching and brought him to freedom.
Themes
In 1863, Irish immigrants angry about the Civil War draft rioted, lynched 11 Black men, and pushed New York’s Black residents out of lower Manhattan. They moved north and eventually settled in Harlem, where the local white population fought hard to keep them out. But in the North, unlike in the South, profit won out over ideology: landlords eventually decided that renting to Black people was in their best interests. Harlem quickly became Black America’s cultural capital. When George moves there, idols like Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, and W. E. B. DuBois all live within the same few blocks. George buys a brownstone in the less swanky part of the neighborhood and starts spending his free time at dance halls like the Savoy Ballroom, where he meets many old friends from Eustis.
George gets the privilege to live in an extremely exciting place in Black America and participate in its vibrant cultural scene—something that could only be possible in the North. Wilkerson gives crucial historical context to help her readers understand how Harlem became New York’s primary Black enclave. Yet it didn’t happen because Northerners were kindhearted or antiracist, but rather because, unlike the South, the North didn’t let its racism get in the way of its drive for profit. Landlords recognized that it was profitable for them to designate an isolated Black enclave, because if Black people could only access a small section of town, they would be willing to pay far higher rents to live there. Thus, New York exploited Black migrants in order to integrate them into the city. The story is similar when it comes to labor. Black migrants were desirable to Northern industrialists most of all because they were willing to work for very little. This is also why white workers violently resisted Black migration: they understood that they would have to compete with the newcomers for jobs.
Themes
Los Angeles, 1953. Robert Foster drives back to Los Angeles. His savings are down to $1.50, but Dr. Beck offers him a guest bedroom and a steady flow of patients. Then, he finds a job screening patients for a Black insurance company. He’s overqualified and never wanted to treat patients door-to-door, but the job pays well enough. It also surprises him—like when one Black woman insists that she will only see a white doctor. Robert gets no surgery referrals, so his hopes of building his own private practice start to fade. His acquaintances from Monroe prefer white doctors or California-educated Black doctors, and some still hold a grudge against his family.
Robert faces more discrimination than he expected, confronts old grudges from back home in Monroe, and has to start at an all-Black company with a job well below his proper pay grade. But he still has plenty of support and can look forward to more promising opportunities than he would have found in Monroe. In this sense, his story shows how the Great Migration allowed two generations of educated Black professionals to more fully realize their potential in the North and West.
Themes
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Robert worries that he’ll disappoint his brother Madison and his father-in-law, Dr. Clement—especially after he learns that Dr. Clement has been elected to the Atlanta Board of Education. This will make him the first Black person since Reconstruction to hold statewide public office in Georgia, where Black people still can’t vote. Robert decides to hunt for referrals by visiting local physicians and churches, but this doesn’t work. However, he has more luck converting his insurance exam clients, especially the ones who just migrated to California from the South.
Robert believes that, if he doesn’t build a successful private practice in Los Angeles, then he might as well have just stayed in Monroe, where he was guaranteed a prominent role in the community, like his brother Madison. Meanwhile, Dr. Clement’s election to the Board of Education arguably makes him the most influential Black man in Georgia. Robert is acutely aware that he and Dr. Clement have chosen opposite paths in life. Beyond the simple contrast between Robert’s decision to leave the South and Dr. Clement’s decision to stay, Robert is also pursuing success on his own highly individualistic terms, while Clement has succeeded by courting power and leaning into existing institutions.
Themes
