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
Near Okolona, Mississippi, Late Autumn 1937. Ida Mae’s brother-in-law drives her, her children, and all their remaining possessions to the train station. Ida Mae fears that Edd Pearson will try to stop them, or that life will be no better in the North. But George is waiting for her at the train station, and she trusts his judgment. She also knows that she’ll be joining her sister and her husband’s family in Wisconsin. The family boards the train’s Jim Crow car and departs.
Ida Mae’s departure circles back to the book’s opening scene. Now, the reader has the context needed to understand why Ida Mae is so nervous: migrating requires a profound leap of faith. She has never left the South, and she doesn’t know if she and her family will actually be able to go. If it doesn’t work out, they have no clear alternative, because once they leave, they simply can’t come back to Mississippi.
Themes
Eustis, Florida, April 14, 1945. George Starling throws together some clothes and books, then has a friend drive him to the train station and boards the Silver Meteor train to New York.
Unlike Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling doesn’t need to take a leap of faith to migrate. He’s already been to New York, and with the grove owners planning to kill him, he's far more afraid of staying than leaving.
Themes
Monroe, Louisiana, the Monday After Easter 1953. Pershing Foster drives west to California, following other famous Monroe residents like actor Mantan Moreland, Black Panther Party founder Huey Newton, and basketball player Bill Russell, as well as several friends and acquaintances. Countless migrants go from Texas and Louisiana to California—in fact, the state’s Black population almost quadruples just during World War II. As he drives toward Houston, where he’ll spend the night with a friend, Pershing decides that he needs a new name. All his life, everyone has called him “Pershing” (which his parents chose after the great World War I general). But from now on, he’ll just be Robert—or better yet, Bob.
Even though his solo road trip might suggest otherwise, Pershing (or Robert) belongs to a mass migration just as much as Ida Mae Gladney and George Starling. But by pointing out that Monroe’s most famous residents were also emigrants, Wilkerson also highlights how the freedom and opportunities that they encountered in California enabled them to actually develop their talents. Needless to say, Robert hopes to do the same, and changing his name is a way to reinvent himself, mark the beginning of his new life, and take his fate into his own hands.
Themes
On the Illinois Central Railroad, October 1937. In the night, Ida Mae, George, James, and Velma head northwest to Jackson, Tennessee, where they switch trains and board the famous Illinois Central Railroad. It’s the most popular route to Chicago and Detroit for Black migrants. It’s also historically significant: Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln worked for it, then it turned into a key supply route for the Union during the Civil War, and then it became the way goods, packages, and Black newspapers like The Chicago Defender reached the South. But Ida Mae and her family don’t know that they’re also making history.
Wilkerson again toggles back and forth between personal and sociological perspectives in order to show how individual decisions, when added together on a large enough scale, could fundamentally shape the course of U.S. history. By emphasizing the history of the Illinois Central Railroad, she shows how an endless range of historical factors contributed to the shape of the Great Migration and places the Great Migration within a long legacy of Black freedom struggles.
Themes
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On the Silver Meteor, April 14, 1945. The Black passengers have to ride in the train’s baggage car, but George Starling doesn’t care. He’s still angry at the other pickers who turned him in to the grove owners.
In addition to showing how deeply the logic of Jim Crow penetrates into everyday life, George’s ride north aboard the segregated Silver Meteor also foreshadows his life once he moves to New York and finds work on the same train.
Themes
East Texas, April 1953. Robert Foster decides to visit Mexico and then make his way to Los Angeles along the southern border. After visiting his medical school friend Dr. Beale in Houston, he drives his beloved Buick Roadmaster down to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where he spends an afternoon wandering around and trying margaritas. After crossing back over the border, he heads for New Mexico, where he has heard that hotels take Black people. He has to drive all night, and in desolate west Texas, he repeatedly pulls over and takes brief naps in his car. But he has to be very careful about where he stops—and around whom.
Robert’s road trip is a thrilling but perilous adventure. His visit to Mexico expands his horizons and gives him a brief respite from segregation. He’s lucky to have a friend in Houston, since Texas is segregated, like the rest of the South. Otherwise, he may have had nowhere to stay, like in rural west Texas, where he’s effectively on his own. As Wilkerson frequently points out, he travels roughly 2,000 miles—much further than many international migrants.
Themes
On the Illinois Central Railroad, October 1937. Ida Mae and her family barrel north through the night on the train. The Jim Crow car is crowded and uncomfortable, and Black passengers have to bring their own food because they can’t get into the dining car. But at least they’re headed for freedom.
Ida Mae and her family’s last taste of segregation may seem particularly bitter, since it’s on the train that is supposed to carry them to freedom. But they have also never known anything else, and their hopes for the future inspire them far more than their current predicament weighs on them.
Themes
On the Silver Meteor, Somewhere in the Carolinas, April 15, 1945. The train may be uncomfortable, but George Starling is thrilled to start over in New York.
Like Ida Mae and her family, George Starling feels like he’s already achieved freedom on the segregated rail car.
Themes
Somewhere East of El Paso, April 1953. Robert Foster heads through the desert towards El Paso, which is on not just the U.S.-Mexico border, but also “the unspoken border between the Jim Crow South and the free Southwest.” Train passengers can switch seats and desegregate themselves as soon as they cross into New Mexico, just like those on the East Coast can do in Washington, D.C. For a few years, in the Midwest, trains actually have to stop in the yard to switch out segregated cars for integrated ones after reaching Cairo, Illinois, on the Ohio River.
The borders of the South seem like a magical threshold that promises migrants freedom—which makes it all the more disheartening when they don’t find it (such as when Robert struggles to find a hotel in Arizona in the next chapter). Meanwhile, the trains that have to switch from segregated to integrated cars underline how inefficient and counterproductive the Jim Crow system is, as well as how deep the divide between Northern and Southern states truly ran.
Themes
Even migrants who travel by car have to pay careful attention to these borders. For instance, one family tells Wilkerson that they stopped at an all-white motel in El Paso because they could pass for white—except for one grandson, whom they had to disguise as luggage and carry into the hotel under a blanket. In contrast, Robert Foster doesn’t pass as white, so he doesn’t rest until he reaches an integrated hotel four hours into New Mexico. Whenever they travel during the Jim Crow era, Black people have to seek out safe houses like this one—which they learn about through word of mouth or special green guidebooks. Robert’s hotel is basic, but he makes the best of it and sets out toward the Arizona border in the morning.
For Black travelers, the novelty and excitement of travel also meant facing all sorts of new perils. They could never be sure when racism would thwart their plans or even put them in serious physical danger. While having the right information (like the green guidebooks) could help, it also created even more barriers to traveling. Of course, this also helps explain why many migrants preferred to travel north by trains—which took them straight to their destination cities. In addition to underlining how stringent and absurd segregation laws were, the anecdote of the family at the El Paso motel also shows how Black people sometimes managed to successfully circumvent these laws.
Themes
