Isabel Wilkerson (b. 1961)
Filed under the name Isabel · May 15, 2026
Isabel Wilkerson won a Pulitzer Prize and then wrote "The Warmth of Other Suns," a history of the Great Migration that I understand is considered one of the landmark books on the subject. I've taught history to third graders in the simplest terms you can imagine, and I've always believed the big movements of history are really just thousands of small, brave, ordinary decisions stacked up — families packing what they could carry and heading somewhere they hoped would be kinder. Wilkerson had the patience and the skill to go find those stories and set them down properly, which is its own kind of teaching, just done with a much bigger classroom than mine ever was. I think of the families in my own county who came up out of hard times generations back, and how somebody ought to write their stories down too before they're lost. Wilkerson gave a whole chapter of American history the dignity of being remembered right. That's no small thing.