Isabel Wilkerson
Isabel Wilkerson is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author known for her deeply researched, narrative-driven histories of race and migration in America. She became the first Black woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism and later authored The Warmth of Other Suns, a landmark chronicle of the Great Migration. Her follow-up, Caste, examines the hidden hierarchy of social division in the United States. Wilkerson blends journalistic rigor with literary storytelling to explore the lived experiences behind historical forces. Her work has earned widespread acclaim for its emotional depth, intellectual insight, and vital contribution to understanding systemic injustice.
This sweeping narrative chronicles the Great Migration, the mass exodus of Black Americans from the South between 1915 and 1970. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson tells this story through the lives of three individuals who left the South for new lives in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. Combining history, sociology, and biography, Wilkerson captures the courage and resilience of those seeking freedom from Jim Crow oppression. The Warmth of Other Suns is both deeply personal and historically expansive, shedding light on a pivotal movement that reshaped American culture, politics, and demographics across the 20th century.