Isabel Wilkerson
Isabel Wilkerson – TRANSCRIPT
Imagine with me this scene. It’s a scene that played out in nearly all of our families. It’s a scene in which a young person, somewhere in our family tree, somewhere in our lineage had a heartbreaking decision to make. It was a decision to leave all that they had known. And all of the people that they had loved and to set out for a place far, far away that they had never seen in hopes that life might be better.
Migration is usually a young person’s endeavor. It’s the kind of thing that you do when you’re on the cusp of life. And so, there is, in all of our families, this young person somewhere in our background. That person is standing at a dock, about to board a ship that will cross the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. That person is loading up a truck that will cross the Rio Grande. Or that person is standing at a railroad platform about to board a train that will cross rivers and mountains out of the Jim Crow South to what they hope will be freedom in the North.
And there, with this young person as they are about to board that ship, that boat, that truck, that train, are the people who raised them. Their mother, their father, their aunt, their uncle, their grandparents, whoever it might have been who had gotten them to this point. Those older people were not going to be able to make the crossing with them. And as they looked into the eyes of the people who had raised them, there was no guarantee that they would ever see them alive again.
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