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Civil Rights Act of 1964
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Civil Rights Act of 1964
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The Warmth of Other Suns Symbols |
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Trains
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Trains represent the Great Migration itself, the human quest for freedom, and migration’s power to reshape society. Like most Black migrants in the 20th century, two of Wilkerson’s protagonists—Ida Mae Gladney and George Starling…
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Photographs—and particularly Wilkerson’s old photo of her mother—represent history’s power to enrich the present. When they reach the North, Wilkerson explains, migrants generally have their photos taken. It’s like a routine of welcoming…
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For Ida Mae Gladney, cotton transforms from a sign of poverty, Jim Crow, and repression into a symbol of freedom and her own identity. In her youth, she works as a sharecropper picking…
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