The Wrath Of Other Suns Analysis

The novel “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wikerson follows the the stories of three African Americans who made the decision, along with millions of others, to leave the south in the early to mid twentieth century. Wilkerson follows their struggles during their time in the south and the barriers that they had to overcome to simply leave this area of prosecution.
The Jim Crow South was a place defined by brutal violence and inequality rivaling that of the prior years with slavery. As is evidenced by the stories of Ida Mae, George Starling, and Pershing Foster, African Americans were subjugated, and became accustomed, to lives as second class citizens throughout the entirety of the Jim Crow era. This idea of being second class citizens was …show more content…
For example, Ida mae grew up in a small town where a white man would come through weekly and start firing of shots at any black man, woman, or child that he came across. This went on and on and the government never persecuted him for anything. However, when the tables flipped and an African American was accused of the slightest wrong, for example opening the door for a white woman and saying something that she was uncomfortable with, or being accused of stealing a turkey, as happened with Ida Mae’s husband’s cousin, Joe Lee, they could be tortured and lynched, whether or not they had in fact committed any crime under the law. This is also shown through George Starling having to leave his father and wife in fear for his life because …show more content…
They attempted to keep backs in the South through through many means, the first being that the state and local governments would make those that came South to recruit labor have multi-thousand dollar permits, and would impose ludicrous fines and penalties on those that came without one. Another reason as to why it was so hard to leave the south was that through the system of sharecropping, the white planter elite could essentially trap the sharecroppers into endless labor as they could claim, even if the sharecropper was actually making them a profit, that they in fact owed him more money at the end of the year. This created an endless cycle of debt that African Americans could not escape from. Furthermore, as Ida Mae brings up, the planters could change their minds about whether the sharecropper was out of debt should it be brought to their knowledge that they were trying to leave. The result of this was that sharecroppers trying to leave had to keep it secret that they were leaving, oftentimes making it so that even their friends had no clue they were leaving until after they had left, which added an emotional obstacle to leaving as well. Lastly, the African Americans that were leaving usually had to know someone