She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official records, to write this definitive and vividly dramatic account of how these American journeys unfolded, altering our cities, our country, and ourselves.

Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. “Profound, necessary and an absolute delight to read.” -Toni Morrisonįrom 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America.

In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.

She has taught at Princeton, Emory, and Boston Universities and has lectured at more than two hundred other colleges and universities across the United States and in Europe and Asia.NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER In 2016, President Barack Obama awarded her the National Humanities Medal. Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago Bureau Chief of The New York Times in 1994, making her the first Black woman in the history of American journalism to win a Pulitzer and the first African-American to win for individual reporting. She is also the author of Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the Heartland Prize for Nonfiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Award for Nonfiction, the Lynton History Prize from Harvard and Columbia universities, and the Stephen Ambrose Oral History Prize. She is the author of the critically-acclaimed book The Warmth of Other Suns, which tells the story of the Great Migration.

Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and writer.

Isabel Wilkerson shares what we can learn from these migration stories. Part 2 of the TED Radio Hour episode Migrationĭuring the Great Migration, almost six million Black Americans moved across the U.S., changing the course of American history.

Isabel wilkerson the great migration