Few authors have more informed (and reshaped) my understanding of American history than Isabel Wilkerson.
I had the honor and thrill of hearing her speak the other night, and she shared a story and lesson I will never forget.
I couldn’t take notes as she told it, but I will capture it as best I can, having done a little research to fill it out.
One Family’s Journey in the Great Migration
In the early to mid-1900s, millions of Black Americans migrated north, escaping the punishing life and crushing poverty of the Jim Crow south and relocating to the North, Midwest and West. As Wilkerson describes, these families were basically defectors: “American citizens [who] had to flee the place of their birth just to be recognized as the citizens they had always been. It was the seeking of political asylum from within the borders of one’s own country.”
Hearing about and dreaming of better lives in the north, these families often focused well in advance on particular destinations long before they actually moved.
One such sharecropper family hailed from Oakville, Alabama. With 10 children, the mother and father weighed heading north with one particular city in mind as their destination. (One of their older children had moved to this city, and wrote back about opportunity there). They thought so much about this city they named their youngest child after it.
His first and middle name: James Cleveland. For short, his family called him “J.C.”
After some back and forth between the parents about moving (according to Wilkerson, J.C.’s mother insisted on leaving the South and ultimately prevailed), the family made the long journey north to Cleveland in 1922.
Starting with nothing in their new city, the family moved several times once there, beginning near East 21st Street, then relocating several times before settling down on E. 100th St. As did most of the new arrivals, J.C.’s father and older siblings took up work in steel mills and factories.
J.C. was 9 at the time of the move north, and first attended Bolton Elementary School. Beyond his school life, he would help his family secure its economic footing by working a variety of jobs—delivering groceries, working in a shoe repair shop, and loading freight cars.
As he got older, attending Fairmount Junior High School, a gym teacher noticed that this young man had stand-out athletic prowess. So the student and this coach began separate training before school, since he still had his work duties after school.
By this time, he was no longer calling himself J.C.
Nor did people know him as James.
Because when this young man first showed up to Bolton Elementary, his teacher had taken the class roll. Newly transplanted from poor, rural Alabama, he spoke so differently from his classmates that she misheard him when he said his name was “J.C.”
She thought he’d said his name was “Jesse.” And he didn’t correct her.
And when he went home and told his parents about the mix-up, they apparently liked the name.
And that’s when Henry and Mary Emma Owens began calling their son by that new name.
Jesse.
Jesse Owens.
You know the rest.
At Fairmount, Jesse set national records in the 100-yard dash, high jump, and long jump. In high school, he won every major state track event he participated in for three straight years, set a world record in the 220-yard dash and long jump, and tied the world record in the 100-yard dash. At The Ohio State University, Jesse Owens won eight collegiate NCAA individual championships; at one meet, he set or tied six world records in a span of 45 minutes; and became the first athlete to win four individual NCAA titles in a single year, repeating the feat two years in a row.
And of course, with Adolf Hitler watching, he would go on to win four gold medals at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin—sending a message that would resonate around the world.
Jesse Owens would become one of the most iconic Americans in our nation’s history.
The Lesson
While about the size of those day’s sprinters, Owens weighed in at about 165 pounds. As Wilkerson summarized: “Jesse was not fit for a cotton field, but rather track and field.”
And her broader point was this.
Under the sting of white supremacy and repression, laboring in those cotton fields in the hot sun as opposed to going to junior high school in Cleveland, Jesse Owen’s world-class talent would never have been discovered.
Only because his mother insisted on moving North was his true talent discovered, and honed, and perfected. While Owens’ talent and character were gifts to the nation and world, those gifts were dangerously close to being forever buried in an Alabama cotton field.
Which only begs the question, as Wilkerson asked: how many other Jesse Owens—with undiscovered and undeveloped gifts and talents—were working those fields, but never had the chance to escape?
How many opera singers and inventors and professors and writers and inspiring political leaders and other barrier breakers were locked into the backbreaking work in those fields—deprived of the chance to discover their true talents (and thus depriving the nation of their talents) because that broken society dictated what they had to be, and gave them no choice or opportunity as to what their life could be?
The answer is: far too many to stomach. Far too much talent and opportunity and basic humanity wiped away by a system that destroyed freedom.
But beyond those general answers, as Wilkerson pointed out, we actually have a window into how much was lost.
How?
Just take a look at the children of those who undertook that Great Migration. Because Jesse Owens was not alone in changing the world as soon as he was freed up to live a life of his choosing, and worthy of his talents.
Who joined with him?
Miles Davis. Toni Morrison. John Coltrane. Bill Russell. Richard Wright. Diana Ross. August Wilson. Ralph Ellison. Prince. Shonda Rhimes.
So many more.
Extraordinary talent—gifts to our nation and the world—who changed American society and culture forever. All part of the Great Migration, or the children of those who bravely made the journey.
The fact that so many rose to such heights once freed to be who they were underscores the massive opportunity and gains that result when freedom advances.
But all those left back toiling in the South—no doubt of equal talent and potential, but unable to discover and develop it—are a haunting reminder of the tragic cost when a country crushes freedom.
Know our history.
Do not repeat it.
Thank you Isabel Wilkerson for all your work.
