WGBH Radio; The Callie Crossley Show

I'm Cally Crossley and this is the Cali Crossley Show. At the beginning of the 20th century. Ninety percent of all African-Americans were living in the south by the 1970s. Nearly half of them had migrated northward and westward making big cities like Detroit Chicago New York and Los Angeles home. This period of American history is called The Great Migration. It's a literal movement that my guest pillocks a prize winning writer Isabel Wilkerson conveys in her new monumental book The Warmth of Other Suns. Nearly a decade in the making. Wilkerson went everywhere churches quilting clubs and senior centers interviewing thousands of African-Americans along the way. She joins us this hour to discuss this profound historic journey. From there it's journalist Michele Norris and her memoir on what it means to be black in America. Up next the African-American experience from migration to race relations. First the news from NPR News in Washington I'm Renee touch of Blonsky.

Many people may still be wary of going on big buying binges but November did bring a moderate boost in spending. The Commerce Department says consumer spending went up four tenths of a percent last month. Analyst Hugh Johnson says that small uptick means a lot of spending by consumers has been probably a look. Stronger than anybody had expected earlier in the year and certainly even in the summer so personal spending is a good number. Incomes grew three tenths of a percent in November pushed out by gains in stock portfolios. When it comes though to wages and salaries those things barely budged. The 111 Congress is history. The lame duck session adjourned last night and as NPR's David Welna reports Democrats managed to produce several pieces of major legislation the Congress that served in the first two years of the Obama administration enacted much of the new president's agenda that included a huge economic stimulus package a major expansion of health care coverage revisions of both financial regulations and food safety rules. The repeal of a ban on openly gay

service members and ratification of a nuclear arms pact with Russia. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid touted those accomplishments as Congress adjourned last night. We've been productive beyond any historical measure. We cannot forget the context we've had to do more with less. Passing some of the most major legislation history with the least bipartisan cooperation in history. It could be a heavier lift for Reed come January when Republicans take control of the house and five more seats in the Senate. David Welna NPR News the Capitol. A federal judge in Kentucky has upheld the ability of the Labor Department to force into federal court mining companies that persistently ignore safety rules. NPR's Howard Berkes says the ruling comes in a case involving Massey Energy which owns the mine in West Virginia where 29 coal miners died in April. Massey Energy's freedom number one mine in Kentucky is the focus of the ruling which bolsters the first ever attempt by the Labor Department to seek federal court supervision of a coal mine considered too dangerous to operate. Freedom was targeted after Massey allegedly failed to

address repeated and persistent safety problems. Massey moved to dismiss the case arguing that the Labor Department needed to exhaust other corrective remedies first. But U.S. District Judge Parr says the law is clear. The Labor Department can seek federal court intervention whenever it believes a continuing hazard exists. Massey is already closing the mine but the judge also ruled that the case can proceed to trial because workers will potentially be exposed to danger for months as they dismantle and remove equipment. Howard Berkes NPR News. In addition to consumer spending numbers are out today showing an increase in sales of new homes last month and a slight drop in first time unemployment claims last week it's leaving Wall Street mixed. The Dow is up seven points to eleven thousand five hundred sixty eight. The Nasdaq is down 5. This is NPR. Two parcel bombs went off at embassies in Rome today. The first bomb exploded over around noon local time at the Swiss embassy. The man who opened the package was hospitalized with

serious hand injuries. About 3 hours later an explosion happened at the Chilean Embassy injuring a person there. Police are now checking all embassies in the city and Rome's mayor is calling the explosions a wave of terrorism. There's been no immediate claim of responsibility. Three men in Australia have been convicted of plotting a terror attack against an army base in Sydney. As Stuart Cohen reports two others accused in the plot were acquitted. The five men of Lebanese and Somali descent were arrested in August of last year after a six month investigation that involved hundreds of hours of phone taps that provided the bulk of the case against them. The men were recorded putting a suicide mission on an Army base on the outskirts of Sydney. They planned to attack the base with automatic weapons and keep shooting until they were killed themselves. Prosecutors showed video of the alleged ringleader inspecting the perimeter of the base. He was quoted on one of the recordings as referring to it as a soft target. The attack was intended as revenge for Australia's military involvement in

Iraq in Afghanistan. The three month trial was one of the country's longest. The jury spent a week deliberating and acquitted two of the men. For NPR News I'm Stuart Cohen in Sydney. People in Southern California may be finally putting away their umbrellas but the rains have isn't over. A spokesman for Los Angeles County says the ground in some parts of the foothills is so soaked it could move at any time. That threat will remain for several weeks and mudslides are still a concern. I'm Rene digital and NPR News. From Washington. Support for NPR comes from the May Foundation supporting the work of bringing change to mind toward to end discrimination and foster understanding of people with mental illness. Good afternoon. I'm Cally Crossley and this is the Kelly Crossley Show. Today we're playing a rebroadcast an interview with Felix a prize winning writer

Isabel Wilkerson. Her new monumental book The Warmth of Other Suns chronicles the massive demographic shifts across the United States called the great migration between 1910 and 1930 the African-American population in cities like New York Chicago Detroit and Cleveland grew by about 40 percent. Isabel Wilkerson interviewed over 1000 people for this story which she ultimately tells through the experience of three African-Americans. Isabel Wilkerson welcome. Great to be here. I want to set the context for our discussion with this one of the many wonderful poems that you have in your book. And I just want to read this for our listeners. This is about Richard Wright's 12 million 12 million Black Voices. We look up at the high southern sky and remember all the sunshine and the rain and we feel a sense of loss but we are leaving. We scanned the kind black faces we have looked

upon since we first saw the light of day and the pain is in our hearts. We are leaving. That's just one of the wonderful pieces describing the emotional place that a lot of African-Americans were in as they made that journey from the south. So begin by telling us who left the numbers and why. Well this really was the biggest underreported story of the 20th century I believe. And it really is about people who were stuck in a caste system in the south and decided that the best option for them was to leave. And so from 1915 the middle of World War 1 until 1970 6 million African-Americans left the South for all points north and west and they fanned out across this country at the beginning of the 20th century before the migration

began 90 percent of all African-Americans were living in the south. By the end of the great migration in 1070. More almost half were living outside of the South. They were living in this great arc of the rest of the South from Boston Philadelphia New York to Cleveland Detroit Chicago and all the way to the west coast Los Angeles and San Francisco just everywhere but south. And what was the main reason where people decided they had to go. Well in some ways there were as many reasons as there were people who left for the six million reason 6000000 circumstances the one thing that might have pushed one person might have been something that might not push someone else but something else turned them toward the idea that they need to leave. Ultimately though this is a story that is so very American classic American story because most all Americans have someone in their background who left a place the only place I've ever

known a grown up for a place far away not knowing what the future held but hoping things would be better for themselves and for their children. So it's a country of immigrants and sent essentially and this was an unrecognized immigration within the song our own country. And it wasn't recognized as such so they were leaving for the same reason that in some ways than anyone ever left. You know parts of Europe to cross the Atlantic on steroids or across the Rio Grande across the Pacific. It's the same migrant immigrant human yearning for something better ultimately. And that's why they left. Now before anybody thinks oh well this sounds very interesting but very heavy and scholarly. It is very much a scholarly piece. But you tell the story through three main characters I have to say characters because the writing is novel like really is a bill so you just follow these stories and sometimes have to remind us of these are real stories of real people it's not a novel. And you made a deliberate

decision to do that. Thank you so much. Thank you so much that we're working on this for 15 years so it's been a lot of time with these people so they hear those words it's music. Music to my heart. Yes I spent as you know many years looking for these three people I interviewed over twelve hundred people was kind of like a casting call you might say. And all over the country going to meetings to Catholic mass Baptist Church senior centers all over and narrowed it down to these three people. So the first one is I had a mae Brandon Gladney who was a sharecropper's wife who was terrible at picking cotton. Awful. I'd never get the amount they were supposed to get basically collapse between the rows because it was so hard when they were picking in 100 degree heat no cover. And she just wasn't good at it you don't think of picking as cotton this and that you'd be good or bad episodes bad at it.

Ultimately though there was a terrible event that occurred on their plantation area and which a cousin was beaten to within an inch of his life over a theft he did not commit. And after learning about what happened to him and actually having to get him out of the out of jail they put him in jail after he was beaten. Her husband came back from having seen what had happened to his cousin and he told his wife. This is the last crop we're making. That's the first one. That's the first story that you have to others. The second one was a man named George Starling who had been a college student in Florida but he had to drop out when the money ran out and he there was no way that he could actually go to school in his home county which would have been more doable but he couldn't go because the schools in Florida were segregated and they did not allow black students. And so he had to return to which was the main work for people in his

home county which was which is picking citrus grap grapefruit oranges and tangerines. And once he started doing that he realized how unjust that world was that they were picking dangerous job actually they'd have to splice ladders together to go up into trees that were 30 feet high and people would fall from the tree break a limb was very dangerous. And he began to argue for better wages to try to organize the people say we should be getting more than just 12 cents a box when it's being sold for $4 a box in the open market. And in doing so he got. The bad side of the growers who were not accustomed to these pickers making any complaint whatsoever they were afraid to say anything and it turned out that there was a lynching planned for him and a friend of his. They didn't know very well but a man who overheard this yard boy overheard the men talking about what they were

planning because this George Starling was causing trouble for them at that point. And this man warned him that this is what he had overheard and it was at that point that George Starling left Florida for New York. OK that's number two. That's number two. And then the third one was Dr. Robert Pershing Foster who when you start smiling when you hear him is quite a character. He was a surgeon in the Army but he returned home to Monroe Louisiana to discover that he could not practice surgery in his own hometown of Monroe Louisiana. He could not even he couldn't practice at all in the hospitals he wasn't permitted. And so he decided to set out on a treacherous journey across the country from Louisiana to California to scout out first the situation get situated then and then send for his family. One of the things that I appreciated that I thought you had to put in the book so people would understand you said there are six million reasons why people left but the context of the

oppression that was happening in the South was really quite intense and I thought you offered some very detailed and quite horrific examples even aside from Ida Mae's cousin being beaten for something that almost to death for something he did a crime he did not commit that that would allow the reader to understand the motivation for wanting to get out of this part of the country. There's so many examples one example of just the things that happen to them for example an item a was a little girl about five or six. She was sent on an errand by a father to the blacksmith. And when she got there she handed the things over that the father needed to be repaired and the blacksmith went inside and began the work on the sons who were to you know how old are teenagers and their young early 20s. Decided well let's go have some fun with her and they actually took her grabbed her and they held her over a well and threatened to drop her you know dangling over the mouth of the well and she was screaming but the blacksmith couldn't hear her and

eventually they got tired of it and they let her go. But that was a terrifying thing for a little girl to have to experience. That was one of the many things she experienced. But beyond that though there were so many laws that dictated every single thing that a black person in a white person could do in any of those southern states if it could be devised and conceived of. They wrote it down and made it a law. So there were many different laws for example there were black and white elevators in the city of Atlanta. There were black and white tellers. You know there was a particular window that you have to go to if you were black going to the bank in Atlanta for example there it was against the law in Birmingham for black people white people to play checkers together. There were black and white telephone booths in Oklahoma. And there were black and white Bibles to swear to tell the truth on in many parts of the South. And it's a particularly interesting story in North Carolina where they actually stopped the court proceedings in order to find the black

Bible for the black person who had just taken the stand. I want you to read from the book so people can hear the beautiful language that you have written because it's just gorgeous while you're looking for a passage that you would enjoy reading I have many that I have marked. Let me say that this book is resonates with me personally because for so long I knew intuitively and through family conversation and others that all of our relatives from Mississippi went to Chicago we have tons of relatives in Chicago. I mean I'm from Tennessee and that people from Louisiana went to California and I was saying to a member of my team the other day if you want a good bowl of gumbo you can guarantee you can get it in California just as easily as you can in Louisiana it may be better for those people who win. So it's I didn't understand that that was part of this big move and I just knew that's where people went and there of course were certain other people that went to New York.

So well one of the things I want to add to that is that of course this is my own family story as well and one of the interesting things about the whole research for this is that I made the discovery that each of those dreams carried a different culture to the end state receiving state. And that meant that it's different wherever you go so you can't get that gumbo in Washington D.C. where I grew up. That's right you get scrapple McGriff. Yeah some things that we have but so. So I found that to be interesting. And you can connect very clearly with the people and your migration stream which is just a part of it. You know there are so many things that I could begin to read to you have something you would like for me. Oh well I mean listeners you should see my book marked up in every possible way. Why don't you read from two twenty seven because you came up with the new terminology we are familiar with underground railroad. But you're telling us about something else here as you describe this movement. And I can say that my mother well you find that from a tiny little town in Louisiana.

And as you know from the migratory patterns people went there for to California so her cousin went to California. Well before he left he gave his one suit to one of the few that he had. To one young man named Andrew Brimmer who grew up to be the first African-American to sit on the Federal Board of reserve and he left that to that small town going west and ended up with a gotten out. There was no way for him to get the education that he could get the bachelor's a master's and certainly the Ph.D. from Harvard that he eventually got to allow him to sit on the Federal Board of Governors and my mother told me that story over and over. She said you know that's our cousin. Anyway. So one of the the term that I use is the overground railroad because in some ways they were facing and I will read that passage that speaks speaks to one of an example of that. But one of the reasons that I caught the overground railroad is because many of the people had to leave in the middle of the night and that was because there was a great effort to keep them from leaving I wanted to make sure that I was able to get that

across. They worked very hard to keep the labor from leaving leaving because there was a concern that this would in some ways be a threat to the Southern way of life and to the economy of the south it depended upon cheap labor where there were more people to do this. This work than there were then there was work for them. And so one of the things that they did when you want to go to page 190 You can read it although you know. The coercion to keep the black labor sales actually you know if you have you know I know the book. I mean one of the things that they would do is that they would actually board the train if they saw that there were many black people on the plane they would actually board and pull them off and charge them with vagrancy laws retards them with debts that they may or may not have had. Another thing they would do is that if they saw a lot of black people on the railroad platform preparing to leave they would actually stop keep the train from stopping me to just wave it on through so the people

couldn't get on there and then ultimately that what they also did was they passed laws that made it illegal for for people in the north to recruit their labor so they actually in Macon Georgia there was a law where you had to sign you had to pay $25000 in order to get a license in order to recruit black people go north. Now that would be that was a fortune that be afforded and now it was astronomical back and then say 1999 I have to say that when you wrote this piece which is second paragraph on page 190. I thought to myself that it had much resonance of the Fugitive Slave Laws that many may be familiar with because people escape to Boston we've heard those stories. The African meeting house here. And if they could get inside the meeting house they would be safe but outside there were people that would grab up free black people and others who they suspected of being runaway slaves and this had a residents of that so here we are Page 190. OK 1:09. And where would you like right when the people.

When the people begin kept leaving I'll give it to you. OK. All right where my little marker is. All right. When the people kept leaving the South resorted to coercion and an interception worthy of the Soviet Union which is forming at that same time across the Atlantic those trying to leave were rendered fugitives by definition and could not be certain they would be able to make it out in Brookhaven Mississippi. Authorities stopped a train with 50 my ignorance on it and sidetracked it for three days in Albany Georgia. The police tore up the tickets of colored passengers as they stood waiting to board dashing their hopes of escaping a minister in South Carolina having seen his parishioners off was arrested at the station and charged on the charge of helping colored people get out. In Savannah Georgia the police arrested every covered person at the station regardless of where he or she was going. And in Summit Mississippi authorities simply closed the ticket office and did not let a northbound train stop for the colored people waiting to get on.

When we come back from break I want you to talk about that leaving as you've just heard there from the perspective of people trying to keep labor south. But for the people who decided to go was not as simple as just deciding to go. So my guest is it Isabel Wilkerson. She's in 1904 pews of surprise winning writer. She's currently the director of the narrative nonfiction program at Boston University. We're talking about the Great Migration a period in American history where millions of African-Americans migrated from the south to the big cities in the north and west. It's a movement that she's Chronicle in her new book The Warmth of Other Suns. We'll be back after this break stay with us. Support for WGBH comes from you and from Weston financial providing comprehensive financial tax estate planning and asset management services for high net worth clients in the Boston area and nationally for more than 30 years. Weston

financial dot net. And from Boston Private Bank and Trust Company. Committed to helping successful individuals and businesses accumulate preserve and grow their wealth. You can learn more at Boston. Private Bank dot com. On the next FRESH AIR Our rock critic Ken Tucker brings his list of the best recordings of the year. And our film critic David Edelstein talks about the best movies of the year. Join us for the next FRESH AIR. This afternoon at eighty nine point seven WGBH. With a long commute car trip or just a quick jaunt across town wouldn't be the same without public

radio. Then consider supporting the programs you love through the WGBH vehicle donation program. Just call 866 409 3:56. A representative will arrange a time to pick up your unwanted vehicle and take care of the paperwork and you'll support WGBH and qualify for a tax deduction. That number again is 8 6 6 400 9 4 2 4. I'm Michele Norris from NPR News and you're listening to eighty nine point seven WGBH radio. Stay with us for the bigger picture behind the day's news on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Coming up at 4:00 Boston NPR station for news and culture. Good afternoon I'm Cally Crossley and this is the Kelly Crossley Show. My guest is Peter surprise winning writer Isabel Wilkerson. Her new monumental book The Warmth of Other Suns chronicles the massive demographic shifts across the United States called the great migration from one thousand fifteen and one thousand seventy more than six million African-Americans moved out of the South to cities across the Northeast

Midwest and West. And as a bill we were talking before the break about just the simple leaving was fraught with all kinds of problems for people. So tell us about them. Well in one case that haunts me still. It was it was a case of actually quite late in the migration when it became even more difficult. Oddly enough to leave that was when the civil rights movement was really getting into gear and the South was doing all it could in the last fitful moments to maintain its way of life. And so it became more difficult to leave in one man in particular decided he was going to go he was about 20 years old and it was so difficult and treacherous that he could not tell anyone. He would go to the bus station. Over time over several months time and he would go at the time he thought he wanted to catch this bus and he would he would he would sit and look at his watch and see oh I see the buses left at 12 10 today or and they go another day as they left the

12:30 who was trying to get an average time because he couldn't dare ask me when he couldn't ask a ticket can ticket agent. He didn't dare ask me once he would go periodically and then on the day where he figured out it was pretty safe he could figure out the time they were leaving. He actually went to a man that he knew in a small town and he did not want to catch the bus there he wanted to go to the bus station from where he lived he wanted to get a ride and his sister decided she wanted to go as well. They packed no clothes they just had a few things in paper bags. He his sister and their two and her two children caught a ride with this man and when they got close to Jesus said I want to know if you could take me into town. That's what he told a man when they neared the bus station. The man got afraid himself the driver and he said what do you car yourself doing. And he just said well we're just going to get off right here. And he got on the bus he with the sister and their two children and they were afraid to say anything on the bus they're so afraid

someone might order them off or someone might recognize them. And he said only when they passed out of the state of Mississippi and into Tennessee and crossed the border he said I felt as if I were being unstuck from a magnet. And the situation was about labor. We're talking about the reason they were trying to keep them is because this was really a ridiculously cheap labor ridiculously cheap labor which actually hurt the south and so many ways because it meant that it kept it depressed everyones wages and even to this day the South lags behind the north when it comes to wages when it comes to the value of land when it comes to productivity and education it still lags those still living with the effects of that in the south. One of the things that has been brought up the only thing that is even slightly critical in terms of its reviews of your book has to do with some suggesting that you didn't factor in the machines coming to the south to pick the cotton so therefore displacing hand pickers. The fact that the North was encouraging this kind of cheap labor to

come there because particularly after the war they needed somebody somebody to work in those factories. But you're saying not so fast something else was going on here. Well there were many many factors involved as I said. There are six million reasons why six million people might leave. But on the whole These were decisions made by individuals there was no leader. One of the beautiful things about this is that you don't have to look to a hero. They each made the decision on their own. And that's a beautiful thing that actually is a wonderful lesson and inspiration for all of us that these individual people. Could make a decision that one on top of the other on top of the other multiplied by millions could in some ways change the face of the north in the south that's incredible power. The power of one to do that. And they didn't even know they were part of some big strange events that are themselves any part of it I would go out and interview people and ask them you know tell them you know while I was speaking peoples I would say if you migrated between this year and that year from this state to the state that you were part of the Great Migration they would say. Really think of

themselves that way. They thought of themselves as I want my child to have a better education. I wanted to be able to not have to step off the sidewalk whenever I was walking into town. I wanted to be able to do a fair work day's work and be and actually be paid for it and not have to constantly be in debt to the planter whose land I was working. So there were many many different reasons. When it comes to the mechanical cotton picker that's a really fascinating thing because. They have mechanical cotton picker was one out of many things that people have pointed to and the past as a reason but mechanical con picker was not in use until the 1940s late 40s and early 50s. By that time the migration was 30 years underway this many people did not. Cannot be said to have done any one thing for any one reason it's just too big. The story is too big. Well I have to say and you don't have to because you're a scholar and you probably can't answer in this way but let me just say from a personal standpoint Hello. There are plenty of emotional reasons to leave a place

where you've been lanced your sharecropping not getting your proper wages your family has no opportunity. Come on give me a break scholars I mean what do you think people got up and left for in the middle of the night. That's my take non-scholarly And to that point. The folks that left were trying to do something better for their kids so let's talk about the people whose lives were changed forever because their relatives got up and became a part of the stream. There are so many people whose names we know and household names who would very likely not be who they were if their parents or grandparents had not left the south partly because of the educational issue. I mean they would not have had the opportunity to do that nor might they have had the exposure to the metabolism of the North which would have exposed them to the library. Remember in those days African-Americans could not go into a library in the south. That's astounding. They could not go inside a library. It would have been exposed. Toni Morrison's parents migrated from Alabama where she had to Lorain Ohio where

she had the opportunity clearly to be exposed to things she would have been exposed to in Alabama and look where she is she's a Nobel laureate. Michelle Obama for example is the product of two migration streams that came to Chicago on both sides of her of her of her lineage. And you see where she is the jazz as we know it might not even have existed it's kind of frightening to think about it the three great legends of jazz Miles Davis his parents migrated from Arkansas to Illinois where he had the opportunity to be exposed to things he would have been exposed to if he was out you know in a farming community. The same goes for the loneliest monk whose parents brought him when he was five years old from North Carolina tobacco country to New York where he got exposed to the rhythms in the metabolism of New York City. And then finally John Coltrane. John Coltrane migrated as a teenager from North Carolina as well but to Philadelphia where he got his first alto sax can you

imagine what the world would be like if he had not gotten that first out Joe sax and he apparently drove people crazy in the apartment building where he was living to the point that they complained so much that he had to turn to a minister who gave him the keys to a church we could play to his heart's content. And you have to mention one young man who came through Boston and made quite an impact who certainly is his life would have been different if he had and his folks hadn't been part of the greater is really hard to imagine what basketball professional basketball would be if Bill Russell's parents had not left Monroe Louisiana where Dr. Foster was from. Your main character my main character is if his parents had not left in the forties and they headed to Oakland which was one of the migration streams for people from that part of Louisiana and the really tragic thing for his family was that they were really being persecuted. There was an example where his father was actually in line to get gas one day and then in the early

1940s. And it was they were taking so long that he decided he would just try another gas station and the owner of the gas station came up to him and put a shotgun to his head and said Where do you think you're going. You know go here. You don't leave here unless I tell you you can leave. And later in that same time period Bill Russell was just a little boy. His his mother was actually ordered by a police officer to go home right then and there and take off the clothes that she had on because she was not to be wearing the kind of clothes that a white woman would wear. Bill Russell came home one day to find his mother crying at the kitchen table and his family when he was 9 years old decided to migrate to Oakland where he had the opportunity to go to. San Francisco State University had he not had he stayed he would not have been able go to college in the inn. It would not even of go to an NC Double-A college in Louisiana that would not have been possible in the night and the 150 is for him not at all. He

went on to lead his school to the end to end and of the two ends the Double-A championships and then of course came to Boston. And history was made. There you go. And how about your own personal story your parents. My own personal story is that my mother migrated from Georgia to Washington D.C. at the tail end of World War 2 and there she eventually went on to Howard University. And there she met my father who had been a Tuskegee airman and he was from southern Virginia. They never would have met had it not been for the Great Migration and I wouldn't even be here. And that in some ways is the story of so many African-Americans. In this country North Midwest and West many African-Americans simply would not have even existed as we now do because our parents or grandparents or great grandparents would not have met. It's hard to it's hard to calculate the effect of something that large.

And that's one of the points that you make. I am speaking with Isabel Wilkerson she is the author of The Warmth of Other Suns which chronicles the Great Migration this massive movement of African-Americans from the south to the north and the West. So one of the things that one of the points you make in your book that I found really interesting is that it's impossible to even calculate the numbers you've given a good estimate. But the reasons were that some people just blended into the population talk about yeah. There are some people who were. Such mixed heritage in other words they had so many white forebears that they actually were able to pass as white. And it's untold numbers of people migrated to these big cities where they could actually create whole new identities for themselves and they blended in completely with the existing white population never to be seen again. That was a very common thing even for those who were recognisably African-American. Some of them changed their names as did one of the

protagonists in the book robber dosa prosing Foster I mean the book starts out with his original name and then he switches the name on his way to California he decides I'm going to be a new and different person I'm starting over. I want you to read from the book and also to make the point when you're done that so many of these people did not even know they were part of the the movement but they don't consider themselves migrants. You know they don't they don't consider themselves migrants because they view themselves as making a personal decision that they felt compelled to do for their own personal circumstances so they all leave for different reasons. In the book the protagonists all leave for different reasons once you get here early on. And if you ask each one you get a different reason that's a reason why it's hard to put it down to the boll weevil or any one thing. Now would you read this passage wars. This is the opening to the book. OK. The title of the book is drawn from this passage from Richard Wright and

that's what I would like to read Richard Wright was one of the best known people who migrated ever and he wrote all of his work as another example who rose from the Great Migration as he tried to make sense of his own migration and he wrote I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown. I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil to see if it could grow differently if it could drink of new and cool rains bend in strange when I respond to the Warmth of Other Suns and perhaps to bloom. What do you want people to take away from this massive work that you've done. So which some have called gripping magisterial fabulous beautifully written on and on and by the way you're an Oprah notable book in O Magazine. What do you want those of our listeners to take away. I would like people to take away the idea that we all have so much more in common than we've been led to believe. We all have inside of us this yearning for something

better this immigrant heart as I call it. And that one of the great tragedies of the 20th century is that people were torn apart not realizing that we all really had so much in common. All of us have in our past someone who wanted something better for maybe not just themselves but their children and grandchildren something they couldn't even see but they pictured in their heart. And these people were no different than that and we all owe them a debt actually. That was my guest Isabel Wilkerson. Her new book is The Warmth of Other Suns. Isabel Wilkerson is a 1994 Pulitzer Prize winning writer. She is the director of the narrative nonfiction program at Boston University. She mentioned Miles Davis earlier as a part of the Great Migration. This song is gone from Porgy and Bess. Up next we talk to NPR's Michele Norris about her new memoir which explores race relations in America. We'll be back after this break. Stay with us. Support for WGBH comes from you and from Boston private banking Trust

Company. Boston private bank provides private and commercial banking and investment management and trust services to individuals and businesses. You can learn more by visiting Boston private bank dot com and from celebrity series of Boston. It's for people who don't want to consume artistic junk. Jack Wright director of marketing and communications. It's the kind of thing that makes you when you pull into the driveway actually stay in the car longer than you planned on. That's the kind of thing we want communicated that we represent. GBH is helping us to present to this audience to learn more. Call 6 1 7 350 500. Next time on the world a California grower takes his farm equipment south of the border he plants his lettuce and broccoli in Mexico because that's where he can find workers sleeping in a foreign country away from my family. Because I don't. Alvan all legal labor in the United States outsourcing America's farms. Next time on the world. Coming up at 3:00 here on eighty nine point seven

WGBH. I want to make the most. Of the new year is closing in and so is the deadline for the WGBH 2011 sustainer 2011 new sustainers before January 1st and WGBH can totally off the first fundraiser of the new year. Let's call it an offer you can't refuse to. Sign on as a sustainer securely at GDH dot org. Brian O'Donovan Come join me every Saturday at 3:00 for the good old fashion section on a Celtic So you're not on any 9.7 WGBH. I'm Kelly Crossley and you're listening to the Kelly Crossley Show. You probably know my guest Michele Norris as the host of NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. But you get to know a

completely different side of her through her new book The Grace of Silence a memoir which explores race relations in America. MICHELE NORRIS welcome. Good to be here Kelly. Good to see you. Well it's I have to let our listeners know that we've known each other for some years. Well it does work to get together a long time ago and then forward on to the other you met each other on the streets and there you go this summer. Who's that person you know or a way to do it me. Well this book started out for those of us who knew you were writing it as one thing it was to be an outgrowth of the conversations that many of the listeners of NPR are probably familiar with the conversations you had about race during the campaign and then it changed. Tell us about that. Yeah it took a sharp left turn. I wanted to write a book about the hidden conversation. About Race in America I thought that people were thinking about race and in different ways and they were talking about it a little bit more and that conversation was out of earshot. You know I was in the conversation and you heard it on cable television or that you read about in the newspaper it

was a private conversation and I want to eavesdrop on that a little bit and write about it. And when I started listening to the private hidden conversation in my own family I started to learn profound things and in some cases very painful things and at first I thought well I'll just include that. It will be anecdotes in that other book when I'm writing about other people's conversations other people. And then that that that story or those stories that I started to hear from the elders in my own family got on top of me it's almost like they jumped on my back and they would like. And the more I learn the more I had to know and the more I knew the more I had to learn. And it just became an obsession and I realized that I was writing the wrong book. I really needed to try to find out what happened in my family that no one talked about. And even though no one talked about it how it wound up having a strong impact on me. It turns out that two of your family secrets big family secrets which I'm going to ask you to explain really are a kind of microcosms of all race

relations in America in their time and place. So tell us about the two big secrets that you learned in putting this piece together. Well I learned. I learned that my father was shot by white police officers in Birmingham shortly after he returned from war after serving in the Navy in World War 2 we had returned to Birmingham his hometown at a time when black veterans were streaming back into the city. They had participated in the fight for democracy and they wanted a taste of it back home and they wanted to vote. They wanted to participate fully in civic life and they faced a big strong high thick white wall of resistance. America was not ready for that. My father in this period of time was going out one evening a police officer tried to stop him and my father this person I knew in childhood as this mild mannered very kind of Zen like very kind man stood up for himself and stood up for these

police officers and a scuffle ensued and he was shot in the leg. Now it's a bit unfortunate to hear me say this. Because he was actually lucky he was shot in the leg but he was actually lucky because he was shot in February of 1046 in the first in Alabama in Alabama and first six weeks of 1046. A half a dozen black veterans were killed by police officers in and around Birmingham Alabama. So my father moved forward he moved to Boston lived here for a very short period of time then went to Chicago and then went to Minnesota married a Minnesota girl and never told my mother about any of this never talked about it to the kids left behind like it was an old sock. Well it turns out Mom had a secret too. My mother never talked about her mother. I own brown. And the time she spent traveling through the Midwest in the late 40s in the early 50s working as an itinerant Anjum Aima.

She dressed up as a gym I'm a she wear head scarf and a hoop skirt and she went to small towns and served pancakes and promoted what was then a novel product pancake mix and this shamed my mother she she didn't talk about it and she at first was very uncomfortable that I asked about it and was absolutely photos that I want to write about it. But she came around over time and we looked back together and learned a lot about her work. I wonder if you'd read a little bit about that moment that you're trying to cope with this new knowledge about your mother's mother and how everybody seemed to be conflicted about that about how they felt about what this meant. Well you know it didn't. At first it wasn't that I was I didn't immediately go to shame when I learned about it. About my mother working is as an engineer. It just didn't fit. I mean my grandmother was this woman who was always well dressed. Her shoes matched her purse and

she'd have that little you know little bit of a little hint of a glove that would peek out from under her under her the flap of her pocketbook. And she always had a beautiful pastel dresser scarf on and she often had that scarf tied right under her chin. You know Jackie O style she was oh so stylish. And I had to think about what it meant for her to sit in front of a mirror and tie that scarf not under her chin but to pull it around the back of her head and tie it up on tops of the so that she looked like an icon and a slave advertisement. I'm going to just read you a little bit if I can. How about my mother's reaction. I thought my mother was going to throw me out of her condo when I asked her about grandma's work. She hated the story as much as she hated my badgering her for details. She was horrified that I might one day share it with the world right about this after I'm gone she would say. I was testing our bond. She's now softened in the shame she felt about Grandma Iowans work less

and the more we talked about it. She now says if you write about this you better get it right and make sure people know not just what that symbol means right now but what it used to mean when they first rolled out all that Mammy mess. She softened Yes but I still sense the tightness in her jaw the coldness in Iraq the withering stare on the back of my neck even as I write this. And frankly Kelly even as I read this I'm going to read on oh so little bit. I want to be clear about something. My disbelief about my grandmother's work as a traveling Anjum I had nothing to do with shame. I just couldn't see her in the role. But I was fascinated imagining imagining her wandering the Midwest earning money by convincing white women to part with theirs. White women who treated her like a celebrity when she came to town. And one of the things I learned Cali is I found newspaper clippings of her of her visits and coming to town under that a picture of my grandmother and she spoke to reporters and then in that sense it was like hearing her speak to me. And she

was not ashamed of her work she talked about how she saw herself as an ambassador she was going to small towns where they hadn't seen black people before she focused on the children knowing that she was probably the first person of color they'd ever seen. And in advertising at the time in women's magazines and I'm a was this befooling ish character. She spoke in this sort of slave tois that that that the company had created for her law serving up some temped allies and pancakes and all of this and it was spelled phonetically you know to let you know that she was you know didn't use the King's English. It sounds like my grandmother did use the King's English when she was visiting the small town she talked about how she tried to be well-spoken and graceful and how she's saying gospel songs so that they would know that she went to church and that she was a Christian she said that was important to her. So in that sense Quaker Oats got a little bit more than they bargained for. OK. Well the book is called the Grace of Silence because you know that story. And I want to go back to your

father story that you didn't know about. Yeah I mean that was one of the big questions for me how was I shaped by the weight of silence he didn't. No one in our immediate household knew but there were other people in the family who were part of the conspiracy I mean his brothers all knew everybody in Alabama knew and even though they sent me to Alabama repeatedly every summer no one talked to me about it. And what I realize now looking back is even though they didn't talk about it it was this force field inside our household and it very much shaped the way they live their lives and the demands they made of us and the expectations they held of us and the way that they wanted the way they view the world in the way they insisted that the world view them. They kept our household in a I mean it was just pristine all the time and that was important to them I love that passage in the book you have a you have a passage that in the book when you talk about what your father did to make your house just be extra special.

My parents moved into the south side of Minneapolis and. They were the first black family that purchased their home there and they wanted to make sure that the neighbors knew that they belonged. Then they led by they led by example. Mom and Dad were obsessive about looking clean and stylish and sophisticated because they lived in a society that perpetuated the notion that black people in the main were none of those things. Yes Belvin and Betty wore uniforms are simple sensible clothing when they marched off to work at the post office. But before taking to the road they'd reach into the other side of the closet. They didn't want a lot of clothes but when they bought civilian wear they bought quality. Dad favored belted Safari style jackets are dark blazers with gold buttons a look he augmented with ribbed turtle necks and jauntily tied Paisley Ascot's for a time he went through a lynx phase wearing the brightly colored golf cardigans favored by singers such as Perry Como and an Andy Williams. Mom was always a half step ahead of what passed for Chic in south Minneapolis if you

could see it she could sew it. And so she sported looks first shown in movies or on television shows. Long before they wound up on local racks and they did the same thing and almost anything they did when we went out to play our tennis shoes had to be clean when we went to the grocery store we had to look a certain way they were so intent on being model minorities I want to remind our listeners that we had Isabel Wilkerson on not long ago talking about the Great Migration and the past by which black families moved from the south up and your family is an example of that and that's what I wonder. It is from Alabama to Minnesota. Yeah. With a stop in Chicago and right along the way. And many people you know Alabama went to Chicago. That's right. I mean in fact when you would today when you meet black families in Chicago they're often ask you Birmingham or Alabama or Mississippi. Yeah. It's my relative That's right yes there are a lot of them come from. My mom didn't want to talk about this I never had the chance to talk to my father he died in 1988 and I never had a chance to ask about any of this but Mom is still here and this year has been

you know it's been really difficult for quite a ride. Learning about her husband having a daughter badger her about these questions you know all these other things come spilling out what we learned about what the you know world was like for black veterans in 1046 But once she started talking once we open that spigot the story started to come out and I learned what life was like for them when they first purchased that home and when they when they moved in and all their neighbors rushed to go out to get you know to get away. And and the only ones that were left were the ones who didn't move fast enough but once she started telling these stories you know she became more comfortable in those one in particular that just that just that tickles me even when I think about it and I'd love to share it with the rest of us. My parents moved in within a week in the white families whose property line touched our soon put their homes up for sale. The three who owned houses across from my parents also decided to de camp as my parents celebrated their new home with a picnic supper. I made boxes in the living room their neighbors furiously burn the dial calling each

other calling my folks mortgage lender to complain and eventually calling real estate agents to put their homes up for sale pronto. Mom says she watched the white flight with a mixture of anger and amusement. The desperation of her new neighbors her desperation of her new neighbors to sell gave her an opportunity for a little mischief every time a real estate agent pulled up with a prospective buyer. She would send my older sisters Margaret and Cindy out to play in the yard or she would saunter out herself. Holding her back or stretching her arms so anyone could plainly see that another child was on the way. That child was me. My sisters and I never knew any of this until recently but now mom loves telling the story. I'd wait until they got inside the house and had time to check out the bedrooms and look inside the closets. And right about the moment I thought they were in the kitchen giving it a real good look see. I'd say to myself she. Michelle what do you want people to take away from the book in general about the Grace of Silence.

There's two things that I think are important at least to me. One is to understand that period of history for what we now know as the civil rights era when we think about the civil rights era. It's often compressed into that period in the mid to late 60s and the marches in Birmingham and Selma and Montgomery and other places but we don't think so much about the period of time that preceded that and when I research what happened to my father I realize that that was such an important period that preamble and. In that year that he was shot. Black veterans all across the country were beaten burned maimed castrated lynched blinded killed and we don't know so much about that. So I hope that people would look back with clear eyes to understand what happened not because I want them to focus on the awful things that happen in this country but perhaps to realize the evolution

in this country where we are and how in some ways in looking at that you can see just how great a country this is because you know from where we've came and how strong so many of these families are our families because we see where they've come from to. And on that issue a family that's the second thing that I hope people take from the book you know because the people who went through those years of tumult decided not to talk about it. Our histories are lost. And that's a shame. I mean I hope that people read this book and decide that it's worth asking a series of simple questions within their own families and in my case it's to capture a racial legacy but that's true no matter where your family comes from. If you live who depression. If you have Holocaust survivors in your family if someone lived and remembers the polio epidemic you know find out as much as you can from the people that you love while you still can because it's not impossible on the other side but it's so hard I mean there's a core question I really think that runs through the throat of this book and I didn't

know that when I started this project but I understand it now. How well do you really know the people who raised you. Because our parents tell us only what we need to know. They don't want to send us out into the world with rocks in our pocket. So they just tell us the good things and leave out the bad. That was Michele Norris host of NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Her new book is the Grace of Silence a memoir which explores race relations in America. You can keep on top of the Calla Crossley Show at WGBH dot org slash Calla Crossley follow us on Twitter or friend the Calla Crossley Show on Facebook. This is the Calla Crossley Show. We're a production of WGBH radio Boston NPR station for news and culture.