The Warmth of Other Suns: Epic Story of America's Great Migration - Historical Nonfiction Book for Book Clubs & American History Enthusiasts

I learned so much. The Great Migration was so enormous and lasted so long, there is very little of this country that wasn't affected by it.Unfortunately, the people who left the South for cities in the North haven't often been seen clearly. As with everything in the US, racial assumptions have been accepted as fact and then programs to address some of the problems facing descendants of the migrants or those who stayed in the South don't work as planned.Much of the migration was shaped by the passenger rail spread over the country at that time. I hadn't realized that the migrants from small towns tended to follow other families and friends from the Southern town. There are little "expat" communities in all of the destination cities that sometimes now are larger than the populations remaining in those rural landsI think the most important thing in this study for me was to dispel the myths about who moved and why. I knew about the violence and oppression in the South, but I didn't know who came north and what they did once here.I believed the migrants had very little education and that the common problems we see in cities where blacks were forced to live were mostly the results of the pathologies they carried to the north.Nope.The reality is that the Great Migration participants had as much, or even more education than people born in the north. Their families were more stable, often included 2 parents and have been able to avoid debt (as of the time this was written). They are active in their communities and don't wait for someone else to give them solutions.In reality, the people who left the South from the first world War up to 1970 closely resemble typical immigrant families coming from other countries. Their kids are better educated than their northern counterparts. They do not need as much government support as the people who were already in these cities when they arrived. These attributes are similar to those of most immigrant populations.I think I can better able to identify with these families than I expected that I could since learning about these members of the Great Migration's children.A couple big differences, though. The children of these migrants are not able to blend into the White population like my family's immigrant generation has. European immigrants could change their names or hide an accent and they looked like the white majority. This group remains visible with very few exceptions.The other was not one I had ever thought about but I should have. Despite the many similarities to immigrant families, the migrants did not accept that label to describe themselves.They objected not only because that isn't an accurate term. Every one of the many members of the Great Migration generation the author spoke to deeply resented the implications of being called immigrants.The migrants didn't cross any international borders. Their famies had been Americans since before America existed. While some might have been huddled masses yearning to be free, they were already citizens of the US.Any time the subjects were described as immigrants, it was as if they were stripped of their citizenship they just as happened when they labored to build this country.That insight alone was worth reading this book and there are many more lessons for me about my fellow citizens from this study/book.I found so many ideas for future research. This will be (is already) a foundational book for rural/urban sociology and probably will spur studies in my areas of interest (media studies, agriculture and ag economics) too.Considering the extreme importance of the rural/urban divide in politics, economics and climate research right now, I recommend reading ASAP.