The Great Migration: When Blacks Fled the South

Facilitator: Sara Hoffman, 970-217-8762, hoffmyers@aol.com Dates: Thursdays, Jan. 9 — Feb. 13, 2025 (6 Weeks) Time: 9:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Texts: The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson, published in 2010, available in paperback. Presentations: Only by choice Location: Foothills Activity Center Class Limit 24

Between WWI and the 1970s, six million Blacks living in the southern United States migrated north. Historians called it the Great Migration. People left families, homes and jobs, all to escape Jim Crow laws and other forms of deeply-entrenched racism practiced in the South. Isabel Wilkerson tells their stories in “The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration.” Wilkerson’s book was recently listed by the New York Times as the second best book of the 21st Century. She also wrote “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” “The Warmth of Other Suns” is a 500-page nonfiction book that will be reviewed over six weeks. Discussion topics will include who left and why; the Harlem Renaissance; the many guises of racism; imprints left by the movement; and calling out the scalawags. We’ll also examine our own prejudices and memories of the times of the Great Migration. Presentations by the facilitator will be followed by class discussions.