We like to think of America as a place where people are free to move about in search of a better life. But not all of our relocations are chosen. Take the Great Migration. Over decades, millions of black Americans felt forced to flee the agrarian Jim Crow South for the industrial cities of the North and West.

Now a new book attempts to convey the full weight and import of the most major population shift in our history. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration is the work of Pulitzer Prize winner and former Chicagoan Isabel Wilkerson.

She’s the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism and the first African American to win for individual reporting. She won the award while heading up the Chicago bureau of the New York Times in 1994.

We discuss her personal story and the tremendous and textural narrative found in her newest book.

Isabel Wilkerson will be speaking tonight at 6 at the Harold Washington Library Center in Chicago.

Music Button after Part 1:  Carolina Chocolate Drops, “Trampled Rose”, from the CD Genuine Negro Jig, (Nonesuch)
Music Button after Part 2:  The Stanley Clarke Trio, “Solar”, from the CD Jazz In The Garden, (Heads Up)