this is from our q&a series. it's about an hour. c-span: isabel wilkerson the author of "the warmth of other suns" do you remember the moment when he started thinking about it? >> guest: i can't can't say what the moment was because i've been living at all my life. my parents migrated from the south to washington d.c., my mother from georgia and my father from southern virginia and washington. that's where they met, married and had me so without the migration i wouldn't be here. i don't know who you would be talking to. so i have lived with it all my life. i grew up with people from north carolina south carolina georgia and i was surrounded by the language, the food, the music, the ambitions of the people who had migrated from the south. a lot of competition about whose childhood go to which school, catholic school a school across

the park so it's been with me all this time. but i think when it comes to the actual writing of the book it probably started very likely after i had gotten out and then a reporter for "the new york times" and started to talk to people in other parts of the country. i was the chicago bureau chief for "the new york times" and i would be in chicago and cleveland and detroit in that began to hear there were similar experiences people head. nobody talked about it as a migration experience. there was just talk about it as well i can't talk about it. this weekend we will have to go back to mississippi where there's a family reunion or a funeral i have to go to. we began to connect the dots and realize it was so much bigger than my connection to their experience in chicago with an national outpouring of people. c-span: give us a brief synopsis of what the book is about. >> guest: the book is about the migration experiences of three people who become representative of a larger whole

which was essentially the defection of 6 million african-americans from the south to the north to the midwest and the west from 1915 world war i until 1970 when the south began to change. c-span: i went to a movie last weekend and they handed me this as i'm going into the movie. i won't tell you what it was what i want to read it to you. everyday more migrants are coming into the cities to seek a better life for their children. the scale of this massive migration from the poor countryside to the burgeoning cities is unprecedented in human history. the migrants provide a constant in cheap source of labor for x country's booming cities and a thriving economy is built on the backs of those citizens. do you have any idea what country it is? >> guest: it could be any country but i'm thinking the united states and southerners. i wrote this book with the idea

that it referred to almost any immigrant who had crossed the atlantic or had crossed the pacific ocean in order to come here or the rio grande. c-span: actually there was a movie called the last train home in china where they have 130 million migrants that live in the cities and go back home once a year. it's a story of their trip. i want to read you what you have in your book up front by richard wright back. i was leaving the south to fling myself into the unknown. i was taking a part of the south to transplant alien soil to see if it could grow differently. if it could drink cool rains banned in strange lands, respond to "the warmth of other suns." thus the title of your book's "the warmth of other suns" and perhaps to bloom by richard wright. who was he and why did you pick him to do, to use your title? >> guest: richard wright was one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century.

he was a migrant from mississippi to chicago. he grew up in mississippi this son of a sharecropper and always wanted to write and he set out on a journey in 1927 to get to chicago. he spent pretty much his entire career almost everything he wrote had to do with understanding this migration experience that he's apart of. understanding his connection between the south in the north. >> but he moved to paris to die and gave up on united states. >> guest: yields metlay was searching for "the warmth of other suns." he kept moving and went to chicago and new york and left the country altogether to go in search. c-span: you said you interviewed 1200 people. >> i stopped counting after that. where did you find them and how did you find them? >> guest: i was looking for three people who would represent the great migration. in all of the cities i went to senior city -- centers and aaup

meetings and quilting clubs in baptist churches catholic mass and i even had a booth at a parade in los angeles, a booth in order to collect the names of people who might have migrated from the south to the north. i was going to all these places where you might find people who were now seniors and might've been participants in this migration. they were not hard to find. it was a matter of going in and talking to them and hearing their stories. c-span: how did you get that information? >> guest: i took notes obviously and at that stage it was essentially like an odd addition. it was like a casting call for these three people. c-span: what years were you doing this? >> guest: it took me 15 years of basically 1995 and it took me 18 months of interviewing going from city to city, going from place to place. the prince hall masons and all these different places in order to find these three. one of the most interesting

sources of people where the state clubs that exist in all the cities meaning when you go to los angeles there is a lake charles louisiana club. there's a monroe louisiana club. there are multiple texas clubs multiple new orleans clubs and so i had to find a way to get access to them and then i would begin to interview them. that is where you basically have a huge source of people that are done exactly what you're looking for. the same goes for chicago and there's a greenville mississippi club. there's a greenwood mississippi club. there's a mississippi club located in the mississippi club so all of these were options in the new york there are churches were almost everyone is from south carolina. c-span: what year did you decide on the three? >> guest: i decided on a three in 1996. c-span: i have your biohere. tell me when i'm wrong. it's you spent 11 years with

"the new york times" 1984 to 1995. you are at boston university right now teaching? live in atlanta? >> guest: i live in both cities. c-span: commuting back and forth. he taught at emory for two years in prison for two years. he graduated from howard here in washington d.c.. you also tossed -- taught at harvard and northwestern. why did you leave journalism? >> guest: i don't consider myself to have left journalism. c-span: why did you leave the newspaper? >> guest: i wanted to write this book. i wanted to explore the reasons why these people left, what was the legacy of what they did and i wanted to understand who they were, why they did what they did and capture them before it was too late. in other words i was feeling a great sense of urgency because it began in 1915 and it ended in 1970. you are talking about a least three generations that were participants in less than they were getting up in years and time is running out.

i felt this real press of time to get to them while there was still time to tell the story. c-span: what kind of the home did you grow up and end your said your mother was from georgia and your father from j jet -- a virginia. what's their story? >> guest: their story is my mother came from washington d.c. at the end of world war ii. she was a young girl. she found work in the governme government. she was doing filing work in a sort of thing for the government and obviously there were many opportunities for people during world war ii. my father was a tuskegee airman and after the war he came to washington as well. they obviously would never have met otherwise have been not come up. they both enrolled at howard university which is where they met. they finally eventually realize that they were the right people for one another and married and then came me. c-span: brothers and sisters? >> guest: i am the only child my mother gave birth to because i was very late in her life.

c-span: are your parents alive? >> guest: father died unfortunately before the book came out and my mother is alive and has basically a shrine to the book. in her home. c-span: here in washington? >> guest: no she is in atlanta. c-span: so so in the home what did you talk about day-to-day with the family that got too into the journalism world? >> guest: actually they didn't talk about it. my father was a civil engineer and my mother had been a teacher so journalism, the idea of going into journalism was not anything that was ever discussed at all. i had this affinity for writing and an affinity for english and languages. i took french and german. i'm not good at them now but i was interested in them so this was always my passion. i was quite curious because there had have never been any journalists in our family. later my mother told me a story involving my grandfather, her

father, which still gets to me about how he wanted to be a writer. essentially no one had been able to go into this. so we didn't talk about it. all i remember is my father was a gracious reader of the newspaper, always had a newspaper. it was always important to be reading a newspaper. c-span: you pick three people. ida mae brandon gladden, george swanson starling and robert joseph pershing foster. tell us something about ida mae brandon gladden. where did she come from? did you meet her and why did you pick her? >> guest: she was from chickasaw county mississippi. she was the wife of a sharecropper will go where they were working the land of the plants are not counted just before the depression and once

the depression hit they were still there. she was terrible at picking cotton and that was one of the things i was interested in. it turned out she was really bad at it and i was glad to tell you that. she had a wonderful way of incorporating both the south and the north into her psyche. she never changed her accent from the moment she arrived in chicago. she spent three times more years in chicago than she did in mississippi and yet when i met her i could barely understand her the first time. by the time i spent a little bit of time with her i could almost imitate her. c-span: so how long did she live in mississippi and -- >> guest: she left mississippi when she was in her mid-20s. she left the family -- the family left because there have been a meeting of the cousin. a cousin of theirs. her husband was beaten nearly to death over the fact that he did not commit.

c-span: this is the story? >> guest: yes. c-span: can you tell the whole story? >> guest: one particular night before her husband returned from errands there was pounding at the door of her cabin and she had two young ones and she had a sister-in-law of living with her so she was surprised to be getting this kind of noise upfront. there were positive men at her door and they were looking for a cousin of hers, her cousin of her husband's name jolie. she said jolie wasn't there and they had come into the house and then gone through the back way to get away from the posse. so she didn't know anything about them. later on when the husband got back home she told him what had occurred and he went out to find out what had occurred but it was too late. jolie had been captured and he was beaten with chains so badly that his clothing had adhered to his skin and he was thrown in

jail instead of taken to a doctor. it was her husband who was one of the men, the male sharecroppers. after seeing what happened to his cousin he then went home to his wife and he said this is the last crop we are making. c-span: what did they do then? >> guest: they have been quietly between the two of them began to do just what little they had, the washed pots and their kerosene lamps and pallets and things that they had. they then quietly went to her mother's house to position themselves to leave and as soon as the cotton was picked they got on the train, the night train up north landing in chicago. briefly in milwaukee and ultimately suddenly in chicago. c-span: in what year did they leave? >> guest: that was 1937. c-span: by that time how many admit left the south? s. go there would have been about a million people who would

have left by that time because they were a half million in the first world war i migrations and there were another 480,000 or so who left during the depression years which was when she left which is the smallest number for each decade. it really took off during world war ii when that was the largest migration. each decade for each period of time during this migration people who were studying at the sociologists primarily were assuming it would be over. they were looking at the impetus for the new rethinking the economics of the north were the main impetus and yes that was a precipitating factor but ultimately once the door had been opened by the north because world war i was the beginning of it. world war i was a time when because of the war in europe immigration have essentially come to a hault and all of the workforce, the workers and the

steel mills and the founders and the factors in the north and had no labour mps northern industries industries then began looking to the south for cheap labor and that meant they had to go to african-americans and began to recruit them. c-span: what was for ida mae brandon gladney lifelike otherwise in mississippi? what other things did they say she couldn't do? >> guest: for one thing she rarely ventured out beyond where she was because life is very controlled. they had so little free time because they were working in the fields. her life was fairly isolated but whenever she would go out there were any number of these, every aspect of life was controlled then. there were no, for example the access to a position was impossible. physicians did not come to the country where she was. overall on the south jim crow had rules and laws that seem so arcane now.

in some places it was illegal for a black person and a white person to play checkers together in certain places and she did not herself work in such a place because she worked in a field. but blacks and whites couldn't walk up the same staircase in certain places where they might've worked together. certain courthouses there was a black bible and a white bible to swear to tell the truth on. c-span: do you hear that story more than once? >> guest: i heard that story more than once that there is a case where it became an issue because in north carolina because the judge, they couldn't find the black bible so it became front-page news in one of the north carolina newspapers. they couldn't find a black bible so they had to hault the court proceedings and the judge said well we might as well follow what the law is. what happened was a black person had taken the standard menu to find the right bible to tell the truth on.

c-span: did you alsfield time my people why they had such rules? >> guest: i didn't spend a lot of time talking with a lot of the white people in this. there was a lot written about that already. my focus was on trying to find the people who would not talk to them. in other words much of the material about the way perspective was widely disseminated. there were many many wonderful books about it, with wilbur cash the mind of the south. there were so many wonderful things that have been written that give a wonderful sense of how people were viewing it. the newspapers wrote endlessly, editorialists wrote endlessly and i quote many of those is that the grass in the chapter. c-span: have got one here. this is an editorial from the macon georgia telegraph september 1916. everybody seems to be asleep about what's going on right under our noses. that is, everybody but those farmers who have awakened up on

mornings recently to find every over 21 on displays gone to cleveland, to pittsburgh, to chicago, to indianapolis. and while her very solvency is being out from beneath as we go about our affairs as usual. that sounds like a liberal editorial in the deep south. why would they have that? >> guest: there was great angst because if nothing was done to keep these people from leaving, and other were to the conditions did not change to make it more possible for them to stay they would lose their great source of labor. that cheap labor was the underpinnings of the southern economy. they depended upon that. it's an expensive proposition and a great apparel if you think about it to plant an entire field of cotton and not know what would happen to it. in certain point i was reading a book that day in the search. i read all about cotton production and it's extremely difficult and a hazardous

difficult job. there are all kinds of things that can go wrong that requires just the amount of rain and not too much rain. it requires just do not write number of days of sunshine but not too much sunshine. there are so many factors that they were dependent on and actually any farmers depended upon at the margin for error was so great. they needed the hands available to pick the cotton once it was there. they could not afford to be losing this labor. c-span: did i read near the end that u.n. ida mae went back down to mississippi? what were the circumstances? >> guest: yes. the circumstances were that i wanted to go back with all of them and her family and she were game and i made arrangements for us to go back. we first flew in to memphis and then drove down highway 61 legendary and made it to the manassas park trace parkway and as we were driving and drew

closer to the county where she lived we came upon some cotton fields. i wanted to go back at the same time she would have left which would have been about now, which is fall of the year which is the high picking season in mississippi where she lived. we saw this cotton field wide open. there were no cars. still isolated land really and she wanted to get out and pick. she said let's stop and pick some and i said are you sure that we can do this? this land belongs to somebody and we are in mississippi. she said okay they are not going to care. she jumped out of the car and went into the rows of cotton and started taking. i went with her still wary. she seemed to be giddy. she hated picking cotton when she had to but now that she didn't have to it's almost like he could not stop her. c-span: what was her lifelike in

chicago? >> guest: in chicago they had a really hard time making adjustments. they arrived as a part of a group of people from the south of those migrants with the least education and the least skills and it didn't translate as well particularly for women. the woman could find work because drawbacks were of value. they could find work in the slaughterhouses in the founders and the steel mills. she had a much harder time because there wasn't as great a need. there also were many immigrant groups there are competing against. there were poles and hungarians in irish and suites in all kinds of germans who newly arrives. they often were further along in the queue particularly the women when it came to domestic work, clearly working in an office and a typing poll -- pool would not be something she would do. it took a long time for her to be able to find work. it took a long time for her husband to find work. at first he was hauling ice on the southside of chicago and he was willing to do it because he

had to haul that much incognito was something he did but it wasn't enough to take care the family. they moved a lot. they moved from place to place to place as they try to find the right location that they could afford. they had a difficult time making adjustments. c-span: how did she feel about moving and? >> guest: at me and she was a kind of person to accept her locked no matter what it would have been. but for all of the people in the book there are many mistakes they might have made in their lives but moving from the south was not one of them. c-span: they didn't regret it though. >> guest: no, not for a minute. c-span: there's a note in the back end it says she died in 2004 and they had a family room. >> guest: her bedroom remains untouched. no one could dare to go in. c-span: why? guest:she was the nature of the family. she was one of the wisest and most beautiful people i have ever met my whole life.

doing this book changed me in so many ways. she had away, a kind of zen perspective if you can imagine it of accepting what was in recognizing what she could not change and moving on and not living in the past. she was beloved by everyone who knew her. i know that is said about a lot of people but she was a special person. when we return self for example one of the things we did was look up -- she was being courted by two men which is where the book begins when it comes to her narrative. her decision of which of those two men was going to ultimately be the deciding one for her life had she gone with one man she would have ended going to chicago. she did note at the time but that is what she chose. the other man decided to stay and when we went back to mississippi we found him. he instantly recognized her.

it had been 60 years and it's as if all those decades hadn't changed anything. he saw her and instantly recognized her and he just said how are you ida mae? he reached for her arm and it was a beautiful moment. then his wife came out. c-span: were you there for that? >> guest: oh yes, of course. c-span: what was it about her when you her when you matter and how did you meet her and did you choose her as one of three out of 1200? >> guest: i went to many places that i described to you. one of the places that i went was the retiree boards or unions of various trades and so i went to the workers, people who had been retired from the cta. the chicago transit authority. when two postal workers and such. when i went to the retiree's

meeting for the cta i passed around the flyer when i made my little statement and there was a woman there who signed up. there were many people who signed up because most of them were from the south or had relatives from the south. a woman said i didn't actually make the decision to come to the south, to come from the south to chicago but my mother did. so it was her daughter who signed her up. when i met with her she was wonderful. c-span: did you know on the spot that she would be running through? >> guest: i knew that i had a connection with her but i tend to be really very methodical so it took a while before i coul could -- i narrowed it down to 30 and she was in the 30. in the writing of this book which was a the narrative it was essential the characters be equally essential and you know who you are reading about. it was also important to be from different backgrounds.

in other words i didn't want them to all the sharecroppers. i didn't want them all to be middle-class or working-class. i wanted them to be distinctive so they'll become one because they'll complement one another. it would have been a situation where with any of them i would say this is one. it took me some time to look at all three circumstances of all three, where did they begin where they have they have landed in the kinds of things that they do? what were their personalities and that was how the three came. it was almost as if you have to have a board on which you have all of their characteristics and you say these will be the three that together will make the whole. c-span: you had one at left of the 30s and when the 40s someone in the 50s and one went to new york in one went to chicago and one went to l.a.. let's go into the second person. george swanson starling from florida to new york. who was he? >> guest: he was a college student at the time that the

migration situation became relevant for him. he had to drop out of school because at that time african-americans could not go to the state schools. they were segregated and he could not go to them. there was one school he could go to but it was far from home and his family decided they weren't going to keep sending him. his father decided he wasn't going to ski keep sending him. he had no schooling so therefore you have to go back to the primary work for people in his part of florida which is central florida picking citrus. when he got out into the groves in the way that he did he began to realize that they work being greatly taken advantage of. the working conditions were poor and the pay was worse. they were being paid 10 to 12 cents a box for dangerous work going into the 30-foot trees on spliced ladders, on limbs were sometimes people would fall in the process of trying to pick

and he began to try to organize the pickers because this was world war ii to make a little bit more money. he would be asking for a nickel more a box as opposed to the 12 or 15 cents. this was a time when each of those boxes was commanding for your $4 on the open market once the ultimately sold so he was just asking for a nickel more. he would go and speak on behalf of all the pickers. he had a hard time keeping them organized. all of them wanted to say while we are here what do we just go ahead and pick and they'd have to keep them at bay. it worked last week so let's try to get his way. c-span: how old would be up in a 1945 when they last? >> guest: he would have been 2425. c-span: what was the impetus for him to leave? >> guest: the impetus for him to leave was they began plotting against him because they didn't like unions in a way which was

what this was ultimately becoming. even his relatives told him this was dangerous work he was doing. he had to basically flee for his life. c-span: how did he go? >> guest: he caught the train and was very careful about not making himself to visible in the hours and days before he left. c-span: what time of day-to-day leave? >> guest: he left on the train in the afternoon. he could only go when the train was leaving. he was leaving for wildwood florida. c-span: would anyone have tried to stop him? >> guest: they apparently didn't try to stop him. he discreetly asked a friend of his if he would take them to the train station. they drove carefully so as not to attract attention. in other words he did not want to let anyone know that he was preparing to leave so he was very careful about that. ..

>> there was no trouble getting work because being male was an advantage in that era. it was during world war ii when he left as opposed to may who

left during the depression. we was a railroad reporter and he went back and forth and there is a lot of stories of him seeing the migration and running into the experience of going south. going from a place that was free and having to adjust going back to the south. >> host: what were the adjustments? >> guest: one of them was the conductors if southern would mistreat some of them. he got on the bad side of one of the conductors and there was a moment for him in which the conductor didn't like what he thought was a dignity that george stalling had. he felt it wasn't proper for an african-american male and haitian be a -- he should -- be a little more humble.

but he had more education than a lot of people he was around. he read a lot and couldn't help being himself. he didn't like playing with the southern conductors. there is a moment when the conductor pushed him while the train was moving and george accidentally was between the train and the conductor was hurled over a white woman. and to the startlement of him and the woman and the woman was understanding. she said why would he do that and she spoke of the conductor and george said to her well, he is southern and he does those kinds of things. if you don't think this is a good thing i would appreciate it if you would write in and say something about it. >> host: you wrote colored

people, negros, blacks and then african-americans. what was your approach there? >> guest: i wanted to reader to be in the moment whenever something was happening. if i was talking about what it meant to be picking cotton or getting on a jim crowe train i wanted you to imagine yourself there. the signs said colored or white so i thought it would be more consistent while in that era talk that way >> host: denine jim crowe. >> guest: it was a system in which african-americans movements were control. it hurt white people because the word cast has multiple meanings. it means a fixed thing. it meant whites and blacks couldn't move freely within their own society. it is perceived as being

something that hurt black people but i believe it hurt both. >> host: where did the name come from? >> guest: a 19th century figure that was from a song called jumping jim crowe and the menstrual performing went all around the country and got rich on this. he picked up seeing the most common view is that he saw a slave who was disabled at the time and unable to dance and walk properly. he was doing this dance called jumping jim crowe and the menstrual performer who performed in black face ended up imitating him and getting rich. he ended up dying young in his

50's and was paralyzed at the end of his life. interesting thing he ended up being disabled. he suffered from the thing he was making fun of all of those years. >> host: were the laws different in each state? >> guest: each state yes. >> host: were they in the north? >> guest: they began in massachusetts. that was the first place having separate rail cars but it wasn't called it at the time. >> host: are there any laws left anywhere? >> guest: i am not aware of any. >> host: what year did they go away? >> guest: it was the 1970's. very late believe it or not. there was a sheriff, lewis mccall, and he refused it take down the colored and white signs in his sheriff's office until

the '70s. he was voted out of office by the people which the demographics had changed by then where northerners coming in. >> host: george stalling still alive? >> guest: no. >> host: what was the end of his life like? >> guest: he was a deacon in the church and he found a peace for a difficult life he had had. he was easy to find at the baptist house of prayer in harlem. he began to tell stories about his experiences. >> host: how did you find him? >> guest: found him at the church. >> host: you just showed up and said here i am? >> guest: i am an assistant work with me and she was the first to make contact. when i heard about him i wanted to talk with him instantly. >> host: by the way, there are no pictures in your book.

why not? >> guest: both my editor and i agrees on no pictures because we want people to lose themselves in the narrative and imagine yourself in the hearts and mind of the people and think about what you would do in that situation, black or white, whatever the situation. we thought by attaching a photograph it would be a distraction to people as they try to absorb themselves in the narratives. >> host: can we ever see them? >> guest: on the website. >> host: there is a young lid lady on the website? >> guest: yes. >> host: is that ida may? >> guest: that is my mother newly arriving in washington, d.c. and sees a sign on the sidewalk that said no standing. and she is pointing to it and her head is to the side and she is so happy and jubilant and

free and she is pointing and saying i am standing here at the no standing sign and i am not in the south. i am in washington, the capital of the union and i am free. >> host: and i saw a man sitting down. who is that? >> guest: that man -- there are several men, i don't know which one you are speaking of -- but there is one in a flight suit? >> host: no, is that your father? i don't think so. how do you find the photos? >> guest: they are not all uploaded. i am book touring and haven't uploaded them all yet but i can tell you they will be up there. i have great photographs of them. >> host: how did george sterling die? >> guest: he died somewhat heartbroken because his children

in some ways been swallowed up by the north he fled to. they went back south in fact and he died heartbroken but still strong but he had a stroke and i went to see him in the hospital and he went into a coma. i went in the room and he was hooked up to all kinds of machines and i squeezed his hand, told him i was there, he squeezed it back and never regrained consciousness. >> host: what happened to his kids? >> guest: his oldest son, who was a lost child, went up to see him in the hospital. he was in a coma by that time and the son saw him in that state and he himself was diabetic and he was so

distraught that he wasn't getting dialysis and all kinds of things wrong with him and he essentially gave up and he died before his own father died. his father didn't know it. he died a week before his father died refusing to go to dialysis. so george stalling left the earth not knowing his son died before him. >> host: the third person you focus on is robert joseph persian foster and i understand that is coming from blackjack persian. >> guest: it was the end of world war 1 when he was born and his mother wanted her black baby to have this important name.

i cannot say if his mother was aware of that. i doubt she would have been. one of the things i write about is the whole naming of a child was a special thing for these parents in the south because there was little else they could give their choirn children. so they had names like queen, d admiral or her choosing that

name had a great meaning for her because she was born in 1918. >> host: in your book, he left monroe, louisiana and went to los angeles? >> guest: went to los angeles, yes. >> host: i don't want to hear him until you tell us your story about you and your parents in a car. sleeping in a car. >> guest: dr. foster told me his story about migration and after hearing it i knew to understand it i needed to re-create it myself. i made plans to drive out there and thought it would be a great way -- my parents were retired and decided they wanted to go with me.

he didn't anticipate we would have as much trouble finding a place to rest. >> host: what year did you drive it? >> guest: i drove it in 1999. >> host: did you spend time overnight in the car? >> guest: we drove to the letter of the places del rio and on to el paso. then we got to phoenix which is where he had trouble.

we could not stop because i was trying to recall. we ended up driving until it was dark. there were hair pin turns and i was getting sleepy. it got worse the further you drove because the settlements were farther apart. i was feeling the effects of no sleep and your fingers aswollen and ache, your eyes are heavy and everything in the body wants to sleep but you have to be alert for what was hair pin curves and no guard rails along

the way. and why got to yuma my parents said you must stop driving and we will find a place to stay. we lived it. it isn't necessary. you must stop. we stopped in yuma, had no trouble at all because it wasn't 1953 any longer. >> host: was me a medical doctor at the time? >> guest: yes, we was in the korean war and performed surgery in austria but found he could not work in a hospital in his own home town. >> host: why? >> guest: because of the jim crowe laws. hospitals didn't permit black people to be doctors or perform any medical work in a hospital. he had a brother who was a physician and he found a way

around it. he could not work in the hospital either. the brother tried and wouldn't be accepted there. so he created a portable hospital office in a car he would carry around. he had a bed you could lay on and supplies in the trunk of his car and he would go serve the sharecroppers in the country. but he didn't want that for himself. we wanted everything he was exposed to in the army. he had a distinguished career in the army. they set out on the journey not

resistance to their arrival. they had to put up with a lot. i wasn't surprised of resistance but i was surprised there was as much as there were just trying

to find a room. >> host: where did you see him and meet and spend time with him? >> guest: the way i met him is the most interesting of all. i spent a great deal of time in los angeles talking to any number of groups i could find who were connected to the south and louisiana and texas. and i ran into all of these clubs like there lake charles club and like creole. i went to so many places and a woman came up and said i have seen you at so many of these places talking to people about this migration. i have heard the questions you have been asking see you are still here so maybe you are still looking. i know the perfect person for you to talk to. and usually when someone says that it is like they are setting you up on a blind date and you figure there is no way they could know who you want.

i met with him at his home in los angeles. a lovely home which was a testament to his achievement and success in los angeles after all he had gone through and he had a hard time getting established. he was gracious presented me with ice cream and cake which e de -- i didn't want or need -- but sat there and ate it. he said i love to talk and i am my favorite subject. >> host: was he married? >> guest: he was but he was widowed. >> host: how old was he? >> guest: he was 74. >> host: what is the vegas story where we wanted to go but wasn't

allowed? >> guest: vegas was off limits to african-americans. he was able to find a job working in los angeles. the think he wanted to do in new orleans. the physicians came back and talked about the stories of where they went and they would ask him have you been there yet and he said you know i cannot go, of course i haven't been. don't ask me anymore. it makes me feel bad and i want to go and can't. and sometimes they would forget and he would say it again. he began to make calls and heard from someone it was beginning to open up to african-americans. this was in the mid-50s. he got the name of a connection. jimmy gay was the man and he became famous for being a person who would help be a go-between helping black people get rooms in the hotels. they were not permitted in the hotels. he heard about jimmy gay, called

him and said we would like to bring a party of 12 and we are excited about going to vaseing. he ended up being a big gambler. and gay said tell me when and where. they went to a place called the riveria. it was brand new. newest conveniences and big deal. there were songs about it in los angeles and he would sing the songs in anticipation. when they got there they had all of this luggage and there was no indication there was a room for them and he began to have recollections of the experiences he had crossing the desert that night not that long before. and he ended up having to call this man and make plans and eventually they got him in another hotel. the sans. and he remembered finally being

able to get to the rue let wheel. he had a special suit, bent over to play the wheel and he was a character with a blood red lining inside a black satin suit he was wearing and he said he was in heaven. >> host: we don't have a lot of time. you said earlier this changed your life. in what way? >> guest: it changed by life because it helped to answer so many questions for me about how the country came to be, about how african-americans made it to the north and west. the majority of people you might meet who are african-americans in the north and west with are descended from this migration and that is an enormous thing i don't think people thought about. it reminded me of how much we have in common with one another. when i was growing up in washington, my mother went to the trouble to make sure we went

to the best school she could find which was east of the park. see made plans for a cab to take me there. i was five years old and she would tell the cab driver don't pick anyone else up. i see your cab number i will pay you and bring her right back home and the cab was always there waiting. it looked empty because there was a 5-year-old in it so she wanted to be sure they didn't pick up anyone else. there were people from all over the country like nupaul, chile and finland and all over. and people descended from ireland or scottland or germany or russia. and on certain days, like st. patrick days they would tell stories about the food and

grandparents. i felt i didn't have stories to tell. but it turned out i did and there were many that came from the migration. >> host: have you had time to get married and have a family? >> guest: i have been married. i am not married now. >> host: any children? >> guest: no. >> host: what is the toughest part of this? how did you survive financially? >> guest: random house gave me an advance and i taught at princeton, i taught at emory and i continued to write for "the new york times" so i did a lot to supplement. >> host: what is next? >> guest: los angeles. and more talking about the book because this book was a book that was written to be read. i am happy to see people reading

it and i want to do well. >> host: isabel wilkerson, the name of the book is the "the warmth of other suns: the epic story of america's great migration." thank you very much for joining us. >> guest: thank you for having me. for a copy of the video call the number on the screen or for a transcript visit us at the website. they are also available as

c-span podcast. here is a great read to ad to your list. -- add -- a collection of stories from the people with the most influence over the last 25 years. >> i knew there was a risk. i decided to take it because whether it is an illusion or not, i don't think it is, it helped by concentration and stopped be being board and others from being bored. asked if i would do it again the answer is probably yes. i would have quit earlier possibly hoping to get away with the whole thing. easy for me to say but not nice for my children to hear.

it would be hypocritical for me to see no, i would not transfer if i had not known. i did know. >> the soviet union and system in europe contained the seeds of its own destruction. many of the problems at the end started at the beginning. i talked about controlling the instituti institutions and the economy and the social life. one of the problems is when you control everything you create opposition and dissidence everywhere. if you tell all artist they have to paint the same way and one artist says i want to paint another way he is a political dissent. >> if you want to subsidize housing put it on the ballot

sheet and make it clear and evident and people aware of how much it is costing. when you deliver it through three-way parties and with private shareholders and executives that can extract a lot of the subsidies for themselves that is not a good way of doing it. >> those were a few of the 41 engaging stories in c-span's sunday at eight. now available at your favorite book seller. c-span 2 providing live coverage of the senate floor proceedings. and booktv on the weekends. for 15 years the only television station devoted to non-fiction books and authors. watch us in hd, like us on

facebook and follow us on twitter. >> coming up, book in prime time with books about u.s.-iran relations. first, we have united states: an insider's view on the failed past and the road to peace". now the former iranian national security administrator talks about iran and the united states relationship in insider's view on the failed past and