“It was during the First World War that a silent pilgrimage took its first steps within the borders of this country. . . It would not end until the 1970s and would set into motion changes in the North and South that no one, not even the people doing the leaving, could have imagined at the start of it or dreamed would take nearly a lifetime to play out. Historians would come to call it the Great Migration.” So many of the families leaving the South were fleeing daily acts of white supremacist terrorism. Regressive social studies curricula in states like Florida and anti-truth education laws that whitewash the history of enslavement, Jim Crow laws, commonplace lynchings, and structural racism in this country make it impossible for students to learn these stories that are central to the foundation of the United States. 

Reference: Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. Vintage Books, 2011.

TODAY’S PRACTICE:

LISTEN to the episode “The Great Migration and Black Foodways” from the podcast Setting the Table.

DAILY REFLECTION: What is your family’s migration story?

TAKE ACTION: Uplift a photo of yourself with a banned book that changed your life (post with #freedomtolearn).