The Warmth of Other Suns

The Warmth of Other Suns

by

Isabel Wilkerson

Robert Joseph Pershing Foster Character Analysis

Robert Joseph Pershing Foster, a surgeon from Monroe, Louisiana who migrates to California in the early 1950s, is the book’s third protagonist. He grows up in a well-respected family in Monroe, where his parents are schoolteachers and community leaders, but he feels profoundly limited by the Jim Crow laws that prevent him from exercising the same rights and accessing the same services as white people. He always dreams of escaping the South. He attends the prestigious Morehouse College in Atlanta, where he meets and marries Alice Clement—the daughter of Rufus Clement, the famous president of Atlanta University. Then, he goes to medical school in Nashville, joins the U.S. Army as a surgeon in Europe, and briefly practices alongside his brother, Madison, back home in Monroe. However, he’s still set on leaving, so in 1953, he decides to move to California. After a perilous journey—during which he has to drive through the night because no hotel will lodge Black people—he reaches Los Angeles. He does checkups for an insurance company, then transitions into private practice, where his attentiveness, generosity, and cultural understanding make him extremely popular among fellow Black Southern migrants. He also starts treating several celebrities, including the singer Ray Charles, and becomes a fixture of the Los Angeles social scene. Nevertheless, he’s too much of a perfectionist to ever be satisfied, his marriage is unhappy, and he develops a compulsive gambling habit. By the end of his life, he’s extraordinarily popular but also deeply lonely, highly personable but also extremely bitter. On paper, he’s a Great Migration success story—he thrived professionally only because he was able to leave the segregated South. But his enduring sense of never being good enough also shows how segregation and racism can profoundly shape people psychologically, as well as how the Great Migration’s promise of material success could also distract people from the human connections that would truly make them happy.

Robert Joseph Pershing Foster Quotes in The Warmth of Other Suns

The The Warmth of Other Suns quotes below are all either spoken by Robert Joseph Pershing Foster or refer to Robert Joseph Pershing Foster. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Migration and Freedom Theme Icon
).
Part Two: Robert Joseph Pershing Foster Quotes

They and Ida Mae and George and Pershing and children all over the South were growing up, trying to comprehend the caste they were born into, adjusting or resisting, lying in bed at night and imagining a world that was different and free, and knowing it was out there because they had seen it in the casual airs, the haughtiness even, and the clothes and the stories of the people from the North. Now nothing around them made sense, and everything that happened to them imprinted itself into their psyches and loomed larger because they had glimpsed what was possible outside the bars of their own existence.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two: A Burdensome Labor Quotes

Morehouse was a heavenly place. Colored boys racing straight-backed and self-important in their sweater vests, hair brushed back with a hint of a center part. Arriving at chapel to sit with their respective fraternities and daring not take the wrong row. There was a sister school, Spelman, the women sealed off in their cloistered dormitories and emerging in fitted dresses and gloves to be paired with Morehouse men, who were the only men worthy of them. There was the graduate school, Atlanta University, where the brightest of both schools were expected to go to take their master’s and doctorates. It was all too perfect for words.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 117
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two: The Awakening Quotes

Thousands of colored soldiers had preceded him overseas during the two great wars—more than a million in World War II alone—and that service had been a defining experience for many of them. They were forced into segregated units and often given the most menial tasks or the most dangerous infantry tours. But they also experienced relief from Jim Crow in those European villages, were recognized as liberating Americans rather than lower-caste colored men, and felt pride in what their uniform represented.

They returned home to a Jim Crow South that expected them to go back to the servile position they left. Most resented it and wanted to be honored for risking their lives for their country rather than attacked for being uppity. Some survived the war only to lose their lives to Jim Crow.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:

A series of unpredictable events and frustrations led to the decisions of Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster to leave the South for good. Their decisions were separate and distinct from anything in the outside world except that they were joining a road already plied decades before by people as discontented as themselves. A thousand hurts and killed wishes led to a final determination by each fed-up individual on the verge of departure, which, added to millions of others, made up what could be called a migration.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two: Breaking Away Quotes

The Great Migration ran along three main tributaries and emptied into reservoirs all over the North and West. One stream, the one George Starling was about to embark upon, carried people from the coastal states of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia up the eastern seaboard to Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and their satellites. A second current, Ida Mae’s, traced the central spine of the continent, paralleling the Father of Waters, from Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas to the industrial cities of Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh. A third and later stream carried people like Pershing from Louisiana and Texas to the entire West Coast, with some black southerners traveling farther than many modern-day immigrants.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Three: Crossing Over Quotes

“I came all this way running from Jim Crow, and it slaps me straight in the face,” Robert said. “And just think, I told my friends, why did they stay in the South and take the crumbs? ‘Come to California.’”

Related Characters: Robert Joseph Pershing Foster (speaker)
Page Number: 210
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Four: The Other Side of Jordan Quotes

They waited for hours to see him. Many were people who back in Texas or Louisiana or Arkansas might have only rarely seen a physician, who were used to midwives and root doctors and home remedies they handed down and concocted for themselves. Here was a doctor who was as science-minded and proficient as any other but who didn’t make fun of their down-home superstitions and knew how to comfort them and translate modern medicine into a language they could understand.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 328
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Five: The Emancipation of Ida Mae Quotes

Ida Mae Gladney, Robert Foster, and George Starling each left different parts of the South during different decades for different reasons and with different outcomes. The three of them would find some measure of happiness, not because their children had been perfect, their own lives without heartache, or because the North had been particularly welcoming. In fact, not a single one of those things had turned out to be true.

[…] Each found some measure of satisfaction because whatever had happened to them, however things had unfolded, it had been of their own choosing, and they could take comfort in that. They believed with all that was in them that they were better off for having made the Migration, that they may have made many mistakes in their lives, but leaving the South had not been one of them.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 524
Explanation and Analysis:
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Robert Joseph Pershing Foster Quotes in The Warmth of Other Suns

The The Warmth of Other Suns quotes below are all either spoken by Robert Joseph Pershing Foster or refer to Robert Joseph Pershing Foster. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Migration and Freedom Theme Icon
).
Part Two: Robert Joseph Pershing Foster Quotes

They and Ida Mae and George and Pershing and children all over the South were growing up, trying to comprehend the caste they were born into, adjusting or resisting, lying in bed at night and imagining a world that was different and free, and knowing it was out there because they had seen it in the casual airs, the haughtiness even, and the clothes and the stories of the people from the North. Now nothing around them made sense, and everything that happened to them imprinted itself into their psyches and loomed larger because they had glimpsed what was possible outside the bars of their own existence.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 90
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two: A Burdensome Labor Quotes

Morehouse was a heavenly place. Colored boys racing straight-backed and self-important in their sweater vests, hair brushed back with a hint of a center part. Arriving at chapel to sit with their respective fraternities and daring not take the wrong row. There was a sister school, Spelman, the women sealed off in their cloistered dormitories and emerging in fitted dresses and gloves to be paired with Morehouse men, who were the only men worthy of them. There was the graduate school, Atlanta University, where the brightest of both schools were expected to go to take their master’s and doctorates. It was all too perfect for words.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 117
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two: The Awakening Quotes

Thousands of colored soldiers had preceded him overseas during the two great wars—more than a million in World War II alone—and that service had been a defining experience for many of them. They were forced into segregated units and often given the most menial tasks or the most dangerous infantry tours. But they also experienced relief from Jim Crow in those European villages, were recognized as liberating Americans rather than lower-caste colored men, and felt pride in what their uniform represented.

They returned home to a Jim Crow South that expected them to go back to the servile position they left. Most resented it and wanted to be honored for risking their lives for their country rather than attacked for being uppity. Some survived the war only to lose their lives to Jim Crow.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:

A series of unpredictable events and frustrations led to the decisions of Ida Mae Gladney, George Swanson Starling, and Robert Pershing Foster to leave the South for good. Their decisions were separate and distinct from anything in the outside world except that they were joining a road already plied decades before by people as discontented as themselves. A thousand hurts and killed wishes led to a final determination by each fed-up individual on the verge of departure, which, added to millions of others, made up what could be called a migration.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 160
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two: Breaking Away Quotes

The Great Migration ran along three main tributaries and emptied into reservoirs all over the North and West. One stream, the one George Starling was about to embark upon, carried people from the coastal states of Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia up the eastern seaboard to Washington, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and their satellites. A second current, Ida Mae’s, traced the central spine of the continent, paralleling the Father of Waters, from Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, and Arkansas to the industrial cities of Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh. A third and later stream carried people like Pershing from Louisiana and Texas to the entire West Coast, with some black southerners traveling farther than many modern-day immigrants.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Three: Crossing Over Quotes

“I came all this way running from Jim Crow, and it slaps me straight in the face,” Robert said. “And just think, I told my friends, why did they stay in the South and take the crumbs? ‘Come to California.’”

Related Characters: Robert Joseph Pershing Foster (speaker)
Page Number: 210
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Four: The Other Side of Jordan Quotes

They waited for hours to see him. Many were people who back in Texas or Louisiana or Arkansas might have only rarely seen a physician, who were used to midwives and root doctors and home remedies they handed down and concocted for themselves. Here was a doctor who was as science-minded and proficient as any other but who didn’t make fun of their down-home superstitions and knew how to comfort them and translate modern medicine into a language they could understand.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 328
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Five: The Emancipation of Ida Mae Quotes

Ida Mae Gladney, Robert Foster, and George Starling each left different parts of the South during different decades for different reasons and with different outcomes. The three of them would find some measure of happiness, not because their children had been perfect, their own lives without heartache, or because the North had been particularly welcoming. In fact, not a single one of those things had turned out to be true.

[…] Each found some measure of satisfaction because whatever had happened to them, however things had unfolded, it had been of their own choosing, and they could take comfort in that. They believed with all that was in them that they were better off for having made the Migration, that they may have made many mistakes in their lives, but leaving the South had not been one of them.

Related Characters: Isabel Wilkerson (speaker), Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Swanson Starling, Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
Page Number: 524
Explanation and Analysis: