' had such an effect on almost every aspect of our lives - from the music that we listen to to the politics of our country to the ways the cities even look and feel, even today,' says Isabel Wilkerson. Between 19, cities such as New York, Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland saw their African-American populations grow by about 40 percent, and the number of African-Americans employed in industrial jobs nearly doubled. This relocation - called the Great Migration - resulted in massive demographic shifts across the United States. Above, a Harlem street in 1942.īetween 19, more than 6 million African-Americans moved out of the South to cities across the Northeast, Midwest and West. The migrants had to build a new life from the clothes on their backs and the few items they could carry with them on their journey.In the 1920s, Harlem's African-American population exploded - with nearly 200,000 African Americans inhabiting a neighborhood where there had been virtually no blacks 15 years earlier. They had to adjust to a foreign environment with no instruction manual on how to survive in the North. 80% of the married migrants enter the half of the single ones were sending money home, most sending $5 per week and something in 10 or more dollars per week out of the weekly wages of $15 back then for unskilled labour is, as many of them would have been.' They had to find new ways to exercise traditions that they had grew up following. They oftentimes sent money to the family members back home. They never gave up on their southern way of life nor their families back home. They readily greeted strangers with a thick Southern hospitality. The also brought their fear of Whites and their mannerisms that Jim Crow forced upon them.

They brought collard greens and oxtails with them to the North. With them they brought their heavy accents, white-fearing mannerisms, and culinary skills. The left behind parents and even their children if they couldn't afford to take them along with them into the new world. Pages 238-241 discuss the traditions and loved ones that the migrants had to face. The challenge of the migrants that stood out to me was the challenge of leaving things behind.

The warmth of other suns