When it comes to history,
there is one voice that
implores us all to understand
ourselves by asking Who are you?
Where did you come from?
Because answering those questios
may help us understand the
conditions we confront today.
Isabel Wilkerson is that voice.
She's a Pulitzer Prize winner,
author of The Warmth of Other S.
The Warmth
of Other Suns was about the
mass migration of 6 million.
African Americans, from the Jim
Crow S to the rest of the count,
including to Buffalo.
And it was a major turning
point in our country's history.
I mean, much of what we see in
any city city that we go to in
the North and Midwest and West
is the essentially the after
effects of the Great Migration.
It turned out that many of theme
been recruited to come to the N,
but when they arrived about tha.
That they had difficulty in
the ways that some other groups
have found resistance when they
arrived from from other countri.
And what my goal would be to hae
us be able to see all the many,
many things we actually have in common.
Because so much of our history
and so much of our even current
debate reminds us of the deep
divisions that we have.
In her book, she tells stories
through the eyes of three
different individuals at one ti.
Well, you're fighting for citizenship.
But fighting for citizenship in
your own country, It doesn't sem
like that should be the case.
But that was happening, right?
Because at the time,
they were dealing with Jim Crow.
Exactly. No. No other group of people
has had to act like immigrants
in order to be recognized as
citizens in their own country.
And so that means that they
were leaving for something very
urgent and very primordial.
But not enough Americans know.
Country's true and full history
How has it changed the South and
how has it changed the North? Te
who stayed in the South African
Americans stayed in the South ed
up fighting the this battle thae
know as the civil rights movement and
the Great Migration helped to spur on
the efforts to to rise above the
the challenges that they were facing.
It turned out that the North wanted the
labor, they wanted the people who were.
Would work in the steel mills
and the factories of the north.
But it turned out that they
did not want the people.
And how do you do that?
I mean, you do that by restricting them,
creating their restrictive covenants,
creating redlining.
She has a new book cast the
origins of our Discontents
that connects us to.
And allows us to see much of whs
unfolding around us in this cou.
So many people in recent times e
been saying something along the lines
of I don't recognize this countr
this is not what America stands for or
how is it that we got to where we are.
You know, we're seeing before or
very eyes efforts to go back ton
earlier time to reassert the sae
social order that have been in
place for so long as we saw what
happened in Tennessee with the.
Expulsion of two black members of the
legislature in the state of Tennessee,
2023 and we're seeing this
type of behavior happening.
What does this say about the
future and what can be done?
So that's the reason why I wrote cast
the origins of our discontents e
able to lay bare exactly what the social
hierarchy has become in our cou.
The history that led to the circumstances
that we are facing as a countryd
why history is one thing that we must.
Understand, in order to be ableo
see what it is that we're facing now,
May 14th, 2022.
A mass shooting in a supermarket
targeted specifically at black people.
No surprises there.
And then also Tennessee,
does any of that surprise you?
We should not be surprised.
We can't afford to be surprised.
We don't have the latitude
of being surprised.
It's necessary for us to recogne
what we've inherited so we could
begin to address these issues rr
than continuing to be surprised.
And it's time that we have an i,
because this is a matter of people's lives.
This is a matter of the
direction of our country.
This is a matter of freedom
and liberty and democracy.
All of these things are at issu.
All these things are in
peril if we do not recognize.
What we alive today are responsible to fix,
to repair, to understand,
to have tone for,
to reconcile, so,
so the generations that follow us will
not have to be dealing with tha.
I mean,
it is our time now.