Isabel Wilkerson’s 2010 bestseller offered a long overdue account of an event in the United States that had a major impact on the cultural fabric of the country: the migration of African Americans out of the south during the early and mid 20th century. When we speak about the history of US migration, this diaspora is rarely mentioned. Cities like New York, Detroit, Chicago and Oakland were end points for many black Americans fleeing Jim Crow and segregation – often by the same railroad that took settlers out west. Would Detroit have produced the historic music of Motown without the hope of a better life that propelled some black southerners on their way to the mid-west? While many made this journey, this well-researched tome focuses on three people who left the south filled with hope during different periods: Ida Mae Gladney, George Starling and Dr Robert Foster.
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