International Human Rights Essay

In her book, Wilkerson discussed the migration that black Americans were forced to make in order to find the stability that they thought other people felt. In her book, Wilkerson makes the case that the great migration achieved the American ideal by ending southern segregation by examining the various lives of three different characters. In general, the author makes the case that the Great Migration’s primary cause was the Southerners’—primarily African Americans—search for independence. (Wilkerson 15). Wilkerson says that several black southerners left their forefather’s land to some other American corner, and in the process, the great migration became history’s turning point as it transformed the urban nation and recast the political and social order of all the cities it touched (Wilkerson 9). The blacks left the farms where they worked and entered big cities, and although the new towns treated them like citizens, they were not treated as such where they had come from. These blacks had no rights as other Americans or they could not access the human rights. Even their movements were controlled by Jim Crow laws that enforced racial segregation in the Southern America. The African American’s facilities were underfunded and inferior compared to those of European Americans, or they failed to exist at all. Wilkerson (10) notes that the Great Migration ended in 1970s when the South changed and all people could vote.

Wilkerson (126-176) goes ahead to talk about the awakening in America. She has given a story of what life was for the colored people. There were crimes and insecurities in the neighborhoods and people often wondered about where they could go to for freedom. Although some that were in the South would go to cities, it would require them to have jobs. The author has given a definitive and vivid dramatic account of the manner in which the African American’s journeys unfolded to alter the American cities, the nation and the people of America in general. Wilkerson told the story using the life of George Starling who migrated to Harlem from Florida in 1945 and endangered his work as he fought for civil rights. Although he watched his own family fall, George lastly set up peace in God. She has also used Ida Mae, who left for Chicago from Mississippi where she had experienced prejudice and sharecropping, but in Chicago she attained blue-collar success. The author also used Robert Foster, who achieved a medical career that enabled him to buy a home where he threw parties. These three people have been used to show how migration was treacherous and exhausting, as well as show the manner in which their newly found colonies became ghettos. They altered the towns with foods from the south, culture and faith, thereby enhancing them with drive, hard work and discipline.

Human rights in America have a history. In 1775, a human rights organization was established to abolish slavery. There was also a statement of human rights in 1776 that held that every man was created equal and that the creator endowed each person with some unalienable rights like life and happiness pursuit. However, despite the creation of a republic that ensured several rights and civil liberties in 1787, the voting rights were not extended beyond the whites. There were also evidences of discrimination based on race and laws that segregated the African Americans in terms of facilities (Stephens et al. 27). Thus the work by Wilkerson can be seen as a depiction of how the African Americans sought for freedom in a country that treated them as outsiders yet they were its citizens that expected protection like their white counterparts.

Works Cited

Stephens, Beth, Michael Ratner, Judith Chomsky, Jennifer Green, and Paul Hoffman. International human rights litigation in US courts. Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: Transnational publishers, 1996.

Wilkerson, Isabel. The warmth of other suns: The epic story of America’s great migration. Vintage, 2011.