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The Warmth of Other Suns: Isabel Wilkerson on the Great Migration

Should they go or should they stay? That was a question millions of African Americans living in the South asked themselves in the 20th Century.

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Should they go or should they stay? That was a question millions of African Americans living in the South asked themselves in the 20th Century.

For many the answer was simple. Life in the South was hard and dangerous, with lynching, Jim Crow laws, and lack of economic opportunities. From 1910 to the 1960s an estimated 6 million African Americans left the South and moved North, in what became known as “The Great Migration.”

On this edition, Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson, author of “The Warmth of Other Suns” traces the legacy of the Great Migration on American society and culture.

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