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Heirs Reading Collective
48 members • Free
2 contributions to Heirs Reading Collective
Mar 29 •
Heirs of the Great Migration: How the Past Became the Future
This book review centers on four books: The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson, alongside White Rage (Carol Anderson), The Counter-Revolution of 1776 (Gerald Horne), and my own Heirs of the Great Migration to rethink the story of Black movement in America. We unpack why millions of Black Americans left the South, what they were escaping, what they encountered in the North, and the long history of Black resistance and struggles for freedom and dignity. And how cycles of backlash and control followed them across generations. This isn’t just a book discussion. It’s about freedom, identity, migration, racial power, deindustrialization, public schools, and the question many of us still carry: what happened to the promise?
0 likes • Apr 5
I look forward to reading both The Warmth of Other Suns and Heirs of the Great Migration, specifically because my grandmother was born in Sumter, SC, in 1931 and fled the South for the freedom that Philadelphia brought. There are family stories about the how and why, told in fragments, the way family stories usually are. And then there were the gems she dropped herself, always at the most unexpected times. I still go outside before a snowstorm just to smell the air the way she taught me. She'd lick her index finger to read the weather coming. I never quite mastered that method, but I understood what she was reaching for when she held her hand up. So many gems collected from my Gullah Geechee grandmother that I didn't know were precious until she was gone. I have extended family scattered throughout the South now, from Florida up through Virginia. Most of us don't speak beyond an occasional Facebook hello with no follow-up. I hate that for us, the grandchildren left outside, whatever rifts created so many silos. We inherited a division we didn't cause and were never given the context to understand. Getting a genealogy report done is on my list. There's so much work ahead, on both my maternal and paternal sides, to end cycles that were never ours to carry in the first place. The sins of the father, I suppose...
Mar 29 •
Welcome to the Heirs of the Great Migration Collective
Welcome to the Heirs of the Great Migration Collective This is not a traditional book club. This is a space to think, reflect, and locate yourself within history—specifically the Blackamerican experience shaped by the Great Migration and everything that followed. We are working through: - The Warmth of Other Suns (Wilkerson) - White Rage (Anderson) - The Counter-Revolution of 1776 (Horne) - Heirs of the Great Migration (Wright) This space is built on a few principles: - No summaries. We are here to analyze, question, and interpret. - Respectful but honest dialogue. Disagreement is welcome—lazy thinking is not. - Make it personal. Where does this show up in your family, your city, your life? - Push your thinking. If something feels uncomfortable, sit with it. Lets start with some introductions. Share as much or as little as you are comfortable. I’ll go first— I’m Manny James Wright. I was born and raised in Waterbury, Connecticut, a city shaped by the Great Migration and deindustrialization. My family’s roots trace back to the South (maternal, North Carolina; paternal, Virginia), like many Blackamerican families, and that history has shaped how I understand education, community, and opportunity. I’ve lived in places like Atlanta, Cairo, and Southern California, and my work sits at the intersection of leadership, policy, and the lived experiences of Blackamerican communities. This is about more than reading.This is about understanding what we inherited—and what we do with it.
0 likes • Apr 5
Hello Collective! I'm Fa Jewel, Fa for short, born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. Life has taken me through Florida City, FL; Norfolk, VA; Ewing, NJ; Morrisville, PA; and now Denver, CO. I'm a mother of three amazingly talented autistic children, Haitian American, like their father. I'm homeschooling them next year, and because I get to build their curriculum, I want to pour as much pride and knowledge of self into it as possible. We're learning Creole and French together, and African American history is next. I come from a single-parent home with a lot of unanswered questions. My maternal elders had a pact: whatever's in the past, stays there. That silence made me hungry. I grew up loving culture, learning from classmates, co-workers, and everyone around me. Reading, acting, the performing arts, anything that told me who people were and where they came from. That hunger is still very much alive. I'm a sponge. I'm here to expand, exchange, and increase. Glad to be in this space :-)
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@fatima-mullins-5565
I'm Fatima Jewel (Fa Jewel), A Philadelphian, in Denver. Here for exchange & increase
Active 63d ago
Joined Apr 4, 2026