18+ Isabel Wilkerson Quotes On Education, Religion And Friendship

Isabel Wilkerson is an American journalist and author. She is best known for her work on the Great Migration of African Americans, which she wrote about in her book The Warmth of Other Suns. Wilkerson is the first African American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in Journalism. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Isabel Wilkerson on education, religion, friendship.

There are certain things that we take for granted that simply would not have existed without the great migration. Motown, for example, would not have existed - it simply would not, because Berry Gordy, the founder of it, his parents had migrated from Georgia to Detroit where he founded Motown, and where did he get his talent? — Isabel Wilkerson

Well, I'm a daughter of the great migration as, really, the majority of African Americans that you meet in the north and west are products of the great migration. It's that massive. Many of us owe our very existence to the fact that people migrated. — Isabel Wilkerson

I mean my mother migrated from Georgia -Rome, Georgia, to Washington, D.C., where she then met my father, who was a Tuskegee Airman who was from Southern Virginia. They migrated to Washington and I wouldn't even exist if it were not for that migration. And I brought her back to Georgia, both my parents, actually. — Isabel Wilkerson

What I love about the stories of the Great Migration is that this is not ancient history; this is living history. Most people of color can find someone in their own family who had experienced a migration of some kind, knowing the sense of dislocation, longing and fortitude. — Isabel Wilkerson

You must leave this world a better place than it would have been if you had not existed. — Isabel Wilkerson

That's one of the biggest losses, I think, to African American families, is that people, once they left, they turned away from the South. They didn't look back, and they often didn't tell their children about it. They didn't want to talk about it. It was too painful, what they'd gone through and the caste system of the South, which was Jim Crow. — Isabel Wilkerson

It occurred to me that no matter where I lived, geography could not save me. — Isabel Wilkerson

[The Great Migration] had such an effect on almost every aspect of our lives - from the music that we listen to to the politics of our country to the ways the cities even look and feel. — Isabel Wilkerson

Many immigrants do not talk about what they endured back home. They were fleeing that world, and when they left they didn't want to talk about it because there had been pain and heartbreak under the caste system of the South. They didn't want to burden their children with what they had endured. — Isabel Wilkerson

It was illegal for black people and white people to play checkers together in Birmingham. And there were even black and white Bibles to swear to tell the truth on in many parts of the South. — Isabel Wilkerson

My parents absolutely did not think of themselves as part of the Great Migration. They knew they were part of a great wave. No one really talked about it in those terms or gave it a name. — Isabel Wilkerson

Sometimes in some places they would actually stop the train - keep the train from stopping at a particular station because they saw that there were so many black people there waiting to board and so therefore those people wouldn't get to leave. — Isabel Wilkerson

America is made up of people who came from someplace else. Even the Native Americans came over the Bering strait... America is what it is because people came from someplace else. — Isabel Wilkerson

Anything that could be conceived of that would separate black people from white people was devised and codified by someone in some state in the South. There were colored and white waiting rooms everywhere, from doctor's offices to the bus stations, as people may already know. — Isabel Wilkerson

Miles Davis, his parents migrated from Arkansas to Illinois, where he had the luxury of being able to practice for hours upon hours. He never would have been able to do that in the cotton country of Arkansas. — Isabel Wilkerson

My parents sent me to a school across town, an integrated school, where I had the chance to meet and grow up with people who were from other parts of the world. ... I remember feeling that I would never have anything to contribute on St. Patrick's Day. I couldn't tell the stories that they might have been telling about their forebears and I felt left out. — Isabel Wilkerson

People leave when life becomes untenable where they are. — Isabel Wilkerson

The suburbanization and the ghettos that were created as a result of the limits of where [African-Americans] could live in the North [still exist today.] And ... the South was forced to change, in part because they were losing such a large part of their workforce through the Great Migration. — Isabel Wilkerson

Life Lessons by Isabel Wilkerson

1. Isabel Wilkerson's work emphasizes the importance of understanding the history of systemic racism and its effects on people of color.
2. Through her work, Wilkerson emphasizes the need to examine our own biases and prejudices and to strive for greater understanding and empathy.
3. Wilkerson also encourages us to take action to create a more equitable and just society by advocating for policies that address the root causes of racism and inequality.