An Oral History of the Great Migration

The massive migration of black Americans from the South to the North in the early part of last century changed the social and cultural landscape of America forever.  Six million African Americans eventually left the South around 1920.  Before then, 90 percent of all African Americans lived in the south.  By 1970, nearly half lived elsewhere in the country. 

We're asking our African American listeners: Does your family have a story about the Great Migration? If so, we'd love to hear it: When did your family come north? Why did they leave the South? Tell us your story...

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson has written a new, more comprehensive history of this mass movement…to remind all of us that it continued well through the civil rights movement.   Isabel Wilkerson’s new book is called The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration.