Jandos Rothstein
Introduction
To search for another sun is to search for another world, another home, another sense of belonging. In The Warmth of Other Suns, written by Isabel Wilkerson, three very different individuals grapple with the inequalities and repression they face in the South. All three are driven to leave for Northern and Western cities at any cost. Yet in their new homes, they are looked upon as second-class citizens, and continue to struggle for a sense of dignity and independence.
These courageous, spirited individuals—Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster—had a universal yearning for freedom. Along with some six million Blacks, they fled the South during the Great Migration. The Migration was expansive, leaderless, and often covert. It transformed the soul of America. As described by Wilkerson, the Great Migration is the “biggest underreported story of the twentieth century.”
The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson
Yet Wilkerson never writes in broad strokes, and does not treat the lives of Ida Mae, George, and Pershing as merely part of a “grand narrative.” Instead, Wilkerson paints rich, unflinching portraits of human beings who pursued the American dream. They dreamt of new light, yet the “New World” was a place of systemic inequality. Even today, the American dream carries unmet promises. Unless we transform the social, economic, and political structures that perpetuate injustice and racial discrimination, the American dream will remain an illusion for many Americans.
Land of the Forefathers
Land and earth are symbols of home, but also of wealth and survival. In The Warmth of Other Suns, access to land symbolizes access to resources. Ida Mae Gladney is married to a plantation sharecropper from Mississippi. They are constantly indebted to a white planter. Even as a girl, Ida Mae realizes that Black men can only get “scratch land nobody wanted.” Her father had a piece of bottomland. Yet no matter how hard he worked, he could not transform the soil. Bottomland is a metaphor for the living conditions of Blacks in a racist and segregated America. Even with a strong family and hard work, Black people were not able to improve their lives. Repressive systems consistently denied them opportunity.
In 1937, when Ida Mae leaves Mississippi for good, she journeys on a train “for the night ride out of the bottomland.” Ida Mae views migration as a chance to finally escape her inferior position. Yet the Northern cities, although seemingly less hostile, disguise the ugliness beneath the surface. “Most colored migrants were funneled into the lowest-paying, least wanted jobs in the harshest industries,” writes Wilkerson. Black women are at the bottom of the economic hierarchy; entire occupations are closed off to Ida Mae. She instead takes on odd jobs without guarantee of safety, stability, or even payment—and is still stuck with “bottomland.”
The importance of land is also shown through the battles waged over land. White communities respond with violence when Blacks attempt to move into “white neighborhoods.” They send death threats, burn entire colored towns, and firebomb buildings. Land is the foundation for self-determination, and property is accrued across generations. Through systematically denying land to Black people, the ruling class cemented inequalities lasting decades.
In the “New World,” Ida Mae moved between overcrowded and rundown apartments. The living conditions did not afford space for dreams “of how best to get out.” Visible effects of the cramped housing—violence, gambling, and drug use—were accompanied by psychological damage. Home is the central point of a family’s identity. Without a stable and humane home, families of color were unable to feel security.
Thirty years after she leaves the South, Ida Mae finally moves into a home of her own. Just weeks later, however, her white neighbors flee. One house vanishes, leaving “a small crater in the Earth.” This visceral image holds parallels with our current structures of displacement, in the form of gentrification and eviction. Today’s neighborhoods of color are segregated, located in “food deserts,” and valued less. Dominating systems still relegate certain groups to “bottomland.” Ida Mae’s America has not been completely erased.
Of course, land was not all Ida Mae needed to truly achieve the American dream. Ida Mae needed—and deserved—justice as a rightful citizen. She needed lawmakers to sever ties with Southern landowners and private economic interests. She needed court systems to block companies from adopting racist employment policies. She needed guarantee of protection by law enforcement. She needed equal education for her children. Ida Mae needed—and deserved—avenues to fight back.
Crossing Over
“A border’s borders are not always clear. Where is it safe to assume you are out of one country and well into another?” These lines, spoken by Dr. Robert Pershing Foster, capture the shifting and unstable boundaries of migration. Dr. Foster is a former Army medical doctor trying to escape the Jim Crow South for California. Yet there is no “border” he can truly cross over. He faces humiliation even during his drive to Los Angeles. When he desperately tries to find a motel room for the night, he is turned away at every stop. Instead, Dr. Foster drives exhausted through the desert, unable to stop.
The individuals in The Warmth of Other Suns are all in constant motion—moving from one job and one neighborhood to another. Yet they are still unable to escape the prejudice and stigma that cloaks them. They are “stuck in a caste system […] unyielding as the red Georgia clay.” “Caste” is usually associated with India’s caste system of classification. However, Wilkerson uses “caste” to show that institutional racism in America is similarly rigid and all-pervasive. The caste systematically categorizes individuals.
Growing up, Pershing recognizes that he lives in a “lower-caste world.” He attempts to overcome the caste through studying to become a surgeon. Yet the caste follows him to California, where he cannot practice at a hospital. To survive, he is forced to collect urine samples. This is humiliating on its own. But during one home visit, a Black woman shocks him by calling him a racial slur. The system “instilling privilege and superiority in whites” also instilled “a sense of inferiority in their colored workers,” Wilkerson explains. Some blacks internalized the caste, and thus sought out whiteness as superior. The mental damage of the caste was as harmful as the social and economic corruption it brought.
Dr. Foster eventually achieves the financial success associated with the American dream. He starts a bustling practice, becomes Ray Charles’s personal physician, and throws extravagant parties. Yet although outwardly successful, he is never truly content. He compulsively gambles, “looking for something that did not exist and that nobody could give him.”
Of the three characters, Dr. Foster had the most privileged background. His challenges and opportunities were worlds away from those of Ida Mae and George Starling. Yet in a society where the playing field is unequal, the psychological effects of the caste still damage his human spirit and leave unseen scars.
The dominant white ideology distorted reality and justified their position in the caste. However, the South’s racism and violence did not just damage Blacks, it also hurt the South itself. Oppression and injustice affect everyone in a society. The caste created “fear and dependence—and hatred of that dependence—on both sides.” The Great Migration starkly illuminated the system’s failings. The caste confined every human being, draining individuals of choice and judgment, and preventing recognition of shared humanity.
And, Perhaps, to Bloom
The Warmth of Other Suns ends with Ida Mae’s bittersweet return to Mississippi, 61 years later. She is suddenly keen to pick cotton, this time as an independent woman and of her own free will. Ida Mae survived—and survived with courageous grace.
While reading the book, I was reminded of my own parents. They immigrated to the United States in 1997—not speaking English, without relatives, and alone. Their situation as immigrants was vastly different. But Wilkerson writes in a universal language of longing and determination.
The Warmth of Other Suns expands and reimagines the American dream’s definition of success. For Ida Mae, success was living to old age gracefully. For Dr. Foster, it was starting an affluent medical practice. And for George Starling, it was not being lynched as a Black man. Although the book painfully illuminates what these individuals were denied, it is also a celebration of the lives they built.
Wilkerson also celebrates future generations. The descendants of the Great Migration birthed jazz, rock, and blues; they molded our food and language. Children of migrants had “a chance to grow up free of Jim Crow and to be their fuller selves.” They became artists, athletes, writers, and cultural icons—and permanently shaped the heart of America.
Prejudices during the Great Migration were ever-present beneath the surface, although migrants were well educated and industrious. Today, viewpoints on U.S. immigration are similar. Latinx immigrants are criminalized as “stealing jobs.” Refugees are seen as an economic burden. Media representations and misinformation have contributed to nationalist rhetoric. Nearly a century later, America must continue recognizing the inequalities and prejudice in our country’s fabric and in our past.
As citizens of a democracy, we have the power to make change through law and government. But we also have the responsibility to listen—to empathize, to tell our own stories, to weave a tapestry that more fully represents the American dream. Our country was founded on a belief in the fundamental right to “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” We cannot forget those who came before us, who fought for these values, who struggled so we could feel the warmth of a sun—and call it home.
