The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration

(NYTBR) ... Today, these black migrants are viewed as a modern version of the Europeans who flooded America’s shores in the late 1800s and early 1900s. What linked them together, Wilkerson writes, was their heroic determination to roll the dice for a better future. It is no surprise, therefore, to find census data showing that blacks who left the South had far more schooling than blacks who stayed. Or that the migrants had higher employment numbers than Northern-born blacks and a more stable family life, as shown by lower divorce rates and fewer children born outside of marriage. Put simply, Wilkerson says, the well-known “migrant advantage” has worked historically for Americans of all colors. Continued

Image: Saint Augustine, Florida. Trainman signalling from a "Jim Crow" coach, 1943, by Gordon Parks (FSA/OWI/Library Congress).