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, Black Boy, 1945
Growing up in the South, I have lived in close proximity to many African Americans; however, I have missed much of the history and personal stories of those who are different from me. One of the ways I’ve been able to address this in my life is to listen and learn from the stories of men and women of color, many also from the South. In addition to cultivating friendships with people of color in my life, books have also had a profound impact on me in this journey. One such book has been The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson which tells the story of the exodus of almost six million African Americans from the South throughout the twentieth century through the lives of three individuals.
A few years ago in online circles I follow, The Warmth of Other Suns was being discussed and recommended. When I was picking up the book at Little Shop of Stories (I also highly recommend this bookstore in downtown Decatur), I told the bookseller I wanted a book for my upcoming summer beach trip. Her comment was, “not your usual beach reading.” She was prophetic as it was not a light read. This book shattered many of my assumptions and biases about racism, especially systemic racism. As I read the stories of courageous men and women who faced immense challenges, I felt sad, shocked, angry, and ashamed at the depravity of how people were treated because their skin color was different. I also learned in greater detail how racism did not end for these men and women who left the Jim Crow South as they faced housing, job, and social discrimination in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. This allowed me to see how deep and entrenched the majority culture bias has been in our country.
One of the three individuals Wilkerson’s book chronicles is Ida Mae Gladney.
She had lived the hardest life, been given the least education, seen the worst the South could hurl at her people, and did not let it break her… She was surrounded by the clipped speech of the North, the crime on the streets, the flight of the white people from her neighborhood, but it was as if she were immune to it all. She took the best of what she saw in the North and the South and interwove them in the way she saw fit… Her success was spiritual, perhaps the hardest of all to achieve. And because of that, she was the happiest and lived the longest of them all.[1]
This growing realization, a realization of racism’s multi-generational impact and the inequities experienced by people like Ida Mae, caused me to lament. But that was not the only reaction I had while reading. I was also struck by the resiliency and spiritual strength of Ida Mae and others, a resiliency and spiritual strength forged through suffering. While the Black Church was not the primary focus of the book, the author referenced the faith of many of the individuals as they sought a better life in spite of the adversities they faced. This has created a growing appreciation for what I and others in majority White churches can learn from the Black Church. There is a rich history and godly example from which I and others can learn much as we enter into the stories.
Why have so many of these stories not been told? I have asked that question to myself many times. Why did I not learn about this growing up? In what ways have I been complicit in ignorance? These are not easy or simple questions. As I’ve learned more about our complex, racial history, I’m finding that I am, in a way, leaving the South. However, this departure is not physical but rather leaving the White-washed, incomplete history of the South. My belief is that hearing untold stories will allow us to see a more complete history. My hope is that in this Black History Month I and others will engage, listen to, learn from, and love our neighbors.
[1] Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (New York: Random House, 2010), p. 532.