The author of an epic study of the Great Migration says it paved the
way for the new exodus south.
By: Joel Dreyfuss | Posted: August 30, 2011 at 12:40 AM
The news from the 2010 census that African Americans are moving south
in significant numbers prompted The Root to call Isabel Wilkerson,
author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration, a work that has been called "magisterial." She spent a
decade on the book, which documents the massive movement of African
Americans between 1910 and 1970 from oppression in the South to
opportunity in the North.
An award-winning writer, Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize for her
journalistic thoroughness and exquisite writing while working at the
New York Times. She spoke to us during a pause on her never-ending
book tour.
The Root: Is the reverse migration a new phenomenon? I've found
articles going back to the 1970s describing black professionals moving
from North to South.
Isabel Wilkerson: It's not new. This kind of demographic shift may
occur very slowly and deceptively, and that's why a lot of times [the
shifts] go unremarked. It's hard to tell what a trend is until the end
of it. The Great Migration that I wrote about -- that migration from
the South to the North -- leveled off and began to shift in favor of
more people moving to the South than outside of the South. The South
began to benefit in the 1980s. It's not a new phenomenon, but
[instead] it's one we're seeing as a continuation.
TR: How do you connect the earlier Great Migration with this new
trend?
IW: When the 20th century began, 90 percent of all African Americans
were living in the South. By the end of that migration, nearly half
were living outside of the South. That global distribution has not
changed dramatically, even with the reverse migration. These things
take decades, generations, to play themselves out.
Right now it may be 55-45 or something along those lines, meaning the
South has always had the majority of African Americans. This reverse
migration is a movement of smaller percentage [than the Great
Migration]. I'm not diminishing the role of it. It just doesn't have
the same magnitude ...
It was the magnitude of that original migration that forced the North
and the South to confront what was going on in the South and
ultimately forced change. The South was losing so much of its cheap
black labor, and the North was being confronted with the arrival of so
many people from the South that [both regions were] forced to deal
with demographic sea change.
If [blacks] wanted to leave, they had a place to go. It was the first
time in American history that African Americans, the lowest-caste
people, had a choice.
When the Great Migration began, there were 10 million African
Americans in the U.S. You were looking at a million leaving per
decade. By the end of it, half [of blacks] had been redistributed to
the rest of the country. Currently there are 35 million to 40 million
African Americans. Even the movement of a million people would not
have the same impact now that it would have then.
TR: The motivations for the Great Migration were largely economic as
well as political: for example, physical intimidation of black people.
Today the reasons for the reverse migration seem more diffused.
IW: I prefer the term "return migration" as opposed to "reverse
migration." That's because "reverse migration" makes it seem the
people had made a mistake and are going backward. I don't believe any
migration is ever a mistake or going backward. It's a universal human
story no matter what our background.
There are many migrations that have occurred in this country -- from
Europe, from the Caribbean, from Asia. Any migration is a decision
made by people who have thought things through and choose another
place as the best place for their family. Any migration is a
referendum on the place they are leaving and an expression of hope for
where they chose to go.
That region [the South] is now a different place. It still has a long
way to go. But it's a different place from when the Great Migration
began. They're returning to a place different from what it was before
because of the effects of the departure and the sacrifice that their
ancestors made.
In some ways it's the maturating of a people who had been marginalized
for so long. Now the children, great-grandchildren, can make a
decision what is absolutely best, not just "We must leave for our
lives!" That actually means there are choices that their parents and
grandparents didn't have.
They're also moving along the tide of other Americans, the
mainstreaming of African Americans into the general trends that may be
going on demographically for other Americans. [African-American]
children have options of going to Houston, to Jackson, Miss., or to
Atlanta or Charlotte -- as any other American might. [The South] is
now a more open place than it had been before. Many white Northerners
who might never have considered living in the South also are moving
there because it's more open to them.
TR: How are the new migrants different from their ancestors who went
North?
IW: The parent and grandparents went to the biggest and most expensive
places in the country: New York, they went to Chicago, they went to
Washington, D.C., they went to Chicago and they went to L.A. They went
to big, expensive, forbidding, anonymous places that cities can be.
Now, their definition of the American dream is different from that of
their parents and grandparents. Their definition may be more space,
more land, more square footage. Their parents had a different
definition of what they needed: the freedom to walk down the street
without having to step off the sidewalk, getting paid for their hard
work. Their expectations were not the expectations people would have
now. Now they're going to where they can live out the life that they
dream for themselves, whether it's the suburbs or a Southern city.
Joel Dreyfuss is managing editor of The Root.
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 winds,
Respond to the warmth of other suns
And, perhaps, to bloom.
-- Richard Wright
(from The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration by Isabel Wilkerson, p. vii)
http://isabelwilkerson.com/
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