That of he told the b.b.c. How he and his family Saad shelter we got our children grabbed their emergency supplies put them and our most enclosed room in that and their house which is our bathroom put them in the back. Said our prayers try to find out what the hell was going on because we didn't hear any alarms any of the sirens there's not much else you can do in that situation and I'm very angry right now because it shouldn't be this easy to make such a big mistake in addition to the f.c.c. Investigation Hawaii lawmakers say they will hold a hearing on what happened officials have repeatedly apologize for the year ever c.z. Rons president says President Trump has failed to undermine the 2015 nuclear agreement N.P.R.'s Peter Kenyon reports Hiran is accusing Trump of trying to destroy the deal in comments broadcast by Iranian state television President Hassan Rouhani called the nuclear deal under which Iran sharply restricted its nuclear program in return for sanctions relief a long lasting victory for Iran last week Trump again waved us sanctions as called for by the deal but warned it would be the last time he does so unless major amendments to the deal or agreed to Iran says it will never agree to renegotiate any part of the deal Iran was also angered by new sanctions announced by Washington on more than a dozen individuals including the powerful head of Iran's judiciary Sadek Larijani Larijani Brother Ali speaker of Iran's parliament says the changes Trump is seeking would be tantamount to the deals destruction Peter Kenyon n.p.r. News Istanbul the Supreme Court has agreed to revisit a 50 year old precedent that has allow consumers to buy online without paying sales tax N.P.R.'s Nina Totenberg reports on the 1967 Court ruling that companies do not have to collect sales tax on out of state purchases in $1607.00 there was no internet and no on line purchasing today States estimate they lose $211000000000.00 a year in sales taxes from online purchases just a snail course such. Once called the current system a judicially created tax shelter and in 2015 Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested that he was repaired to overrule the old decision in light of modern realities the case the court will hear later this term comes from South Dakota which has no state income tax and relies on retail sales taxes for revenue the state passed a law requiring out of state sellers like Overstock dot com to collect sales taxes and turn them over to the state N.P.R.'s Nina Totenberg and this is n.p.r. News good morning for Delaware Public Radio News in Dover I'm Tom Byrne members of Congress are being asked to weigh in on President Donald Trump's mental stability the Republic b.s. Sarah Miller has more a recently published book about Trump's 1st 100 days in office has raised questions about his mental stability critics point to his use of Twitter comments about white nationalists and his habit of saying things without evidence Senator Chris Coons says it's not his place to diagnose the president but he answered a question about Trump's mental stability last year by saying the president has fulfilled his pledge as a candidate to be a completely different kind of president President Trump was elected as an unconventional candidate someone who promised to be unpredictable and to keep our. Enemies and adversaries around the world off center with his unpredictability and he has certainly demonstrated that but Coombs has blasted recent comments by Trump denigrating African countries and saying the u.s. Doesn't want immigrants from those countries or from Haiti he says Trump at times in braces nativist or racist instincts and gives voice to them Trump has denied making those comments Sarah Mueller Delaware public media is continuing its efforts to find the next generation of cyber security professionals the 1st is signed on to participate in the new girls go cyber start initiative this February girls go cyber start of the variational last summer's cyber Start program that offers local high school juniors and seniors and 1st day college students the opportunity to learn basic cybersecurity skills. Girls go cyber star will specifically target young women in high school according to Elaine Starkey she security officer for Delaware's department of technology information Starkey says prior cybersecurity knowledge or programming experience is not necessary just a computer and internet access what it will do is it will give them a chance to determine if they have the aptitude and if they have the problem solving skills and and many of the other skills that are needed for a good cybersecurity analyst or professional registration opens January 29th and runs through February 16th for Delaware Public Radio News and over I'm Tom Burke support for n.p.r. Comes from n.p.r. Stations other contributors include vital projects fund supporting the Museum of Modern Art where the exit Bishan items is fashion modern closes January 28th more info and tickets at Moma dot org and the ne ek z. Foundation we were public media have another inventive way for public radio fans to listen to the local news and programming that matters to you find us on i Tunes Radio start listening today simply search for dollar public media inside i Tunes Radio on being until Republican media is sponsored by you our listeners and by John Phillips who was adopted by the ease on being do you have a favorite program you'd like to adopt give us a call at 302-857-7228 or go online to Delaware public dot org Thanks you go to the doctor for anything and they will begin to treat you without taking your history and not just yours but that of your parents and grandparents before you have a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson points this out as she reflects on her epic book The Warmth of Other Suns it's a carrier of history's stories truths that help make sense of human and social challenges newly visible at the heart of our life together Isabel Wilkerson has also become an unexpected voice on the enduring human drama of refugees. And emigration she is herself a product of one of the most underreported stories of the 20th century which she chronicles the Exodus or great migration of $6000000.00 African-Americans from the south to the north of the United States you know our country is like a really old house I leveled houses I've always lived in old houses both Houses need a lot of work and the work is never done and just when you think you've finished one renovation it's time to do something else that something else has gone wrong and that's what our country is like and you may not want to go into that basement. But if you really don't go into that basement it's at your own peril. And I think that whatever you are ignoring is not going to go away whatever you're ignoring is only going to get worse or whatever you're ignoring will be there to be reckoned with until you reckon with it and I think that that's what we're called upon to do where we are right now. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being. Isabel Wilkerson won the Pulitzer Prize for her work as Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times and is the recipient of the National Humanities Medal the Great Migration gave the world a balance of brilliance from Michelle Obama and James Baldwin to Diana Ross and John Coltrane while also planting harder foundations that continue to touch on every American in some way The Warmth of Other Suns traces the story through the lens of 3 Ordinary Lives in 3 succeeding generations item a brand and Gladney who moved from Mississippi to Chicago in the 1930 s. George Swanson Starling from Florida to New York in the 1940 s. And Robert Joseph Pershing Foster who went from Louisiana to California in the 1950 s. I interviewed Isabel Wilkerson at the 2016 faith and Literature Festival at the University of North Carolina Asheville. You yourself are a child of this create my question. And I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that and also you know I was asked this question about the religious or spiritual background of someone's childhood and I think that as my cumulative conversation has progressed I have a much more expansive imagination about what that is the spiritual background of funds childhood so I just wonder. If the fact that you're a child of this migration flowed into what you now might imagine as the spiritual background of your childhood I do think that they're intertwined I mean I'm I'm the daughter of 2 people who uprooted themselves from the old country of the South from different states and relocated. And remade themselves in the New World which was Washington d.c. For them and in doing so that meant that. They were kind of leaving behind parts of themselves in order to take on this new persona I think that's what migrants often do is they take on the identity of the new place that they hope will work out for them no guarantees a leap of faith in the end. When it comes to the family background it so happens that my mother's father was a Baptist minister. And my father grew up in Virginia also in a Baptist church it also happens that my father was a pilot he actually taught to ski airmen he was an airman and he also taught did flight training for them and I think there's something about being the daughter of a pilot that makes you feel that you know metaphorically you could fly to now. Like this. So the title of the book is The Warmth of Other Suns which comes from some lines of Richard Wright another prize. Of this experience as he was about to leave Mississippi for Chicago in 1027 and I was going to read it he wrote I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown I was taking a part of the South to transplant in alien soil to see if it could grow differently if it could drink of new and cool rains bend in strange whens respond to the Warmth of Other Suns and perhaps just perhaps to bloom. In our you have. I mean you've said that the language of political asylum is absolutely apt here for what people were undertaking and it's just not. As much as we know a lot of these stories and a lot of the things that were wrong that feels like a new recognition. It does I think that because it happened within the borders of our own country we don't think about it yeah as 1st of all it was a kind of immigration although these were this is the only group of Americans who had to act like immigrants in order to be recognized as citizens they were forced to seek political asylum within the borders of their own country because they were living in a caste system in the south that did not recognize their citizenship and some of them travel farther than them current day immigrants might but that was really not the point the point was that the country actually was it was kind of 2 countries and one and that's what they had to do I often say that the you know the book is viewed as being a book about the Great Migration and over time as I've talked about it over these years I've come to realize that it's not about migration the great migration is not about migration and really probably no migration as about migration it's about freedom and how far people are willing to go to achieve it this is the means that they feel they must take in order to find freedom wherever they can find it yeah and this book is such a it embodies this paradox that writers know that storytellers know that radio actually knows that the more particular you can get with your story the more universally It can be received in a mess that others can join their life and their imagination with what you have to share and there were these moments for me in the book that were just so human right there were so relatable that made all of these other horrors come home right and so one of them for me was George Swanson Sterling was. You asked him. What he hoped for in leaving and he said. I was hoping I would be able to live as a man and express myself in a manly way getting chills without the fear of getting lynched at night. And even the way it comes across I mean if he did see him say it it doesn't sound like you said it with a lot of bitterness or drama it was just matter of fact not even that much emotion because it was that these were the facts of their lives and. At that time when they were growing up in this time period was a very long time it was the end of reconstruction until the 1970 s. I mean in compassed someone who you know was born at the you know 18 eighties and passed away in the sixty's would have known nothing other than this and so these were the facts of their lives and he didn't he was not emotional he wasn't bitter it was just a matter of fact statement of what it was that he was up against and why he felt he had no choice but to go I ran into a lot of people said they didn't think they would have lived if they had stayed there was actually a tremendous amount of fear that a lot of parents in the South had for their children if they were you know if they were extroverted and opinionated you know children or yaf they were spirited in eggs and restive you know there was a need to rein that in I mean in other words childhood itself had to be controlled in repressed because it could mean their very lives and so he grew up under that and his father said Well if this is if you're going to continue doing this work the things you're doing it's best that you go and you know one of the one of these that happened in this great migration is that it's spread people all over this country I mean people these places that they went there had not been a significant African-American population right so you look at you know the African-American population of all of this the cities in the North Midwest and West are a result of this we're seeing the manifestation of that you know Seattle or or Oakland or. Senator it wasn't this it Troy you know wasn't none of those places where what they were at the time and a lot of them are are filled by people who felt they had no choice in that they would not have lived at they had gotten out. And it's not like they were being welcomed with open arms when they landed in northern cities now many of them sadly I mean the great tragedy is that they were brought in as strikebreakers by the companies who were trying to break the unions and so that meant that you know one of the great tragedies of the 20th century is that there were all these people arriving in these big cities of the North industrial cities Detroit Chicago Cleveland Buffalo all these places and they were people coming in from parts of Europe eastern and southern Europe for example and there were people coming from the South African Americans all wanting the same thing and there were places in Milwaukee for example that said you know that no African-American many places actually said African-Americans would not be hired but they would stop them as they were walking up to the factory gate because it was visible that they were African-American and so as it turned out many of the recruiters representing you might say the North they wanted the labor. African-Americans from the south but didn't want the people how do you do that. Right right. So I want to read a little bit of. Another moment for me and this brings us to our moment another moment in a book that was just heartbreaking was very early on. And it's when you 1st met I had a May in 1906 in Chicago. From the open door in the vestibule I see her. She is sitting in a cotton house stress on a baby blue plastic covered easy chair by the window she is looking through a parting of the curtains at the street circus below there they are all scuffling beneath her urban drug dealers falling down sweat pants pulling at their feet now bent over the driver's side window of a late model sedan from the suburbs 4th graders doing look out for men who could be their fathers young girls with their stomachs swelling already middle aged men living out of their Pontiacs gangsters who might not make it to the weekend she lives on the 2nd floor of a 3 flat on the South Side of Chicago and I want to say before I say that she is there are marketable joyful person. But this is a heartbreaking moment it is to know that this is this is what it became for her in Chicago the promised land. It's a reflection of the structures that they confronted upon arrival it's all the things that you know that sociology and political science and the history come together and show us that they arrived invited but not welcome they arrived. At making the least for the hardest work they arrived. Consigned to neighborhoods that in which that were declining that had been declining from the moment they arrived mean I'm talking at the beginning of the migration the subdivision the subdivided Coldwater flats that they were living in the originating part of of where these people are living upon arrival and they were not African-Americans were not permitted in any of the cities to live anywhere that they wanted or anywhere that their money would take them all of us who've been to any city in the north know exactly where the arriving district arriving neighborhood of people the great migration would be because that's where it's the oldest broken down neighborhood in all these cities usually well positioned by the railroad tracks or near the that you know it's all it's almost like a refugee camp of now because you go very obviously camps around the world now and you hear the word refugee camp and you think it's tents but in fact where you have refugee camps where generations of people have been living it looks like that's exactly it I mean that's that's such an incredible observation that you're making that is that these were refugee camps created in our American cities and as they sought to expand early if they managed to save whatever they could from these jobs and a lot of them in this new research about the great migrations coming out showing that they actually. He worked multiple jobs so they actually were making more money but it wasn't going as far because there were so many coming in flooding these neighborhoods that were you know being him day in and pressed against and that was the world that they had entered they were living in the vice districts I mean all of the things that make for every possible disadvantage that you can have going in that's what they were facing your existence by definition prohibited you from getting a standard mortgage and so they would then get mortgages on the 2nd market and secondary market which meant that they were paying exorbitant rates this is sounding very much like you know 200620074 us now and so this is all setting in motion all of these forces that are making it even more difficult for people to succeed in these big places the cities of refuge for the people of the great migration. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today with journalist Isabel Wilkerson the author of The Warmth of Other Suns. So between the time you 1st published the book in 2010 and today. These have been years in which we have been forced to confront the fact that with all the laws that were passed and with the progress that was made there's so much unfinished business and in fact that all the progress wasn't there and I wonder how you you watch. What has risen to the surface I mean I think that the good news is that we see this it's not on see a bull anymore it's a moment of reckoning and I wonder how having traced this history you know being able to see the origins of some of these dynamics that we're facing now how how you have understood what is happening now in ways that perhaps you wouldn't have if you hadn't done this research and delved into this story. Well it's kind of reminded me that you know our country is like a really old house I leveled houses I've always lived in all the houses but old houses need a lot of work and the work is never done and just when you think you've finished one renovation it's time to do something else that something else has gone wrong and that's what our country is like and you may not want to go into that basement. But if you really don't go into that basement it's at your own peril and I think that whatever you are ignoring is not going to go away whatever you're ignoring it is only going to get worse or whatever you're ignoring will be there to be reckoned with until you reckon with it and I think that that's what we're called upon to do where we are right now I'm also reminded there's a tremendous amount of new and exciting research on the sort of the this is foundational sort of in the d.n.a. Of our country which is what this book is about too it's about the caste system the artificial hierarchy that was put in place before our great great great grand parents you know were alive it's something that we've inherited it's not something that we wanted if you're on the the beneficiary end of it you didn't ask to be on the beneficiary end of it certainly if you're on the the targeted end of it you certainly don't ask beyond that but this is where we are and I think that it's calling upon us to to reckon with this finally that the disturbing thing about where we happen to be right now is that yes these things are unseeable but that does not mean that that actions being taken I mean we see that so many of these cases are really not they're not being prosecuted and each case that does not get acted upon I think deepens our own collective complicity in this unjust injustice I also think that you know. We have to recognize how we are all being victimized to by these images of death we're actually seeing human beings American citizen by arms is who are dying before our very eyes and what is the effect that that's having on all of us collectively is that in you are going us is that numbing us to the to Black Death is it making it acceptable on some level because you see something enough times it normalizes it and I would like to think that this would never be viewed as normal Yeah I mean here's a striking terrible statistic that you know that there was a lynching every 4 days in the early decades of the 20th century and it's been estimated that an African-American is now killed by police every 2 to 3 days I also find great hope in the science of implicit bias and it's also just us understanding our brains and if you want to see it in the largest possible perspective it's this possibility we have a 21st century of wholeness of really understanding ourselves and our wholeness I've never thought of it as in terms of people getting a new or to Black Death but I do think something that happens is that these images are so people feel so paralyzed by them right so it's so terrible it's so in explicable and you have no idea how you could make a difference I would agree with you actually find this new research which is why x. Described it as exciting Yeah I think that what's freeing about it it's liberating because it takes it away from the personal this is not personal right. It doesn't mean that there aren't things that each and every one of us can do in our personal lives too in how we comport ourselves and how we reach out to others and how we treat those around us and other actions that we might choose to take politically or otherwise but it also means that it's frees us from the twin barriers to understanding guilt and shame yet Right right because it's not personal and a caste system is a structure that we have inherited that we did not create that we don't there's no point in pointing fingers about it but it's something that we recognizing it is the 1st step toward toward dismantling it. And. As much as you know the dynamics here and abroad there's a lot that is is a fearful backlash kind of fearful and frightening resistance to this knowledge that also comes from those primitive parts of our brain. But I I feel like the success of this book and books like Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow and she's a strong student she says the term cast to yeah I'm out the same year we did neither of us knew about the right term right it was the term our independent research separate. Came to the conclusion that that was the appropriate and precise term to describe the way that we live in the world in which we live and the way people are engaging with this telling of the truth and her work and the coats book I want to take that seriously because it does suggest. An opening to knowing this and to grappling with this and I mean you said to me really all you do I mean you are a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter but all you do now is travel around. Accepting invitations to talk about this in rooms like this which makes me feel really hopeful I mean and it's kind of a narrative of another kind of energy that's present in this moment that we don't we don't tell ourselves that story of right now but I don't know am I reading that into it is what she what has been your experience of being out there with this material. You know it's actually been all over the world and I actually was in Singapore talk about this book and I was speaking to a group of high school students who can be sometimes challenging and I usually like to give them examples of people who they can recognize from who are part of the Great Migration and I didn't know how well that would play there and so I was I was giving me as clues and I said well this is an individual who was who was a guitarist and his mother was from Virginia and they actually migrated out to Seattle and the hand shot up in the back of the student just Jimi Hendrix and I was just thinking Mike in this it is just it is really not really my career I mean the culture has migrated and the appreciation for how this has unfolded and the impact that it's had has resonance around the world I mean to tell Obama is also another good it can just you know this person in the center of our culture and how is it just a great story of the product of this product I mean there are so many people Tony Morrison August Wilson Well and behind the Washington I mean there are so so many people that you could you could that's one way of recognizing the impact that it had because ultimately what this migration was and I think people are are identifying it is that it's an unleashing of this pent up creativity and genius in many cases of people miscast in this caste system you know you think about those you know as cotton fields in those rice plantations in those tobacco fields and and on all of those you know cotton fields and tobacco plantations and rice plantations were opera singers and jazz musicians and poets and professors defense attorneys doctors and mean that's this is the manifestation of the desire to be free and what was lost to the country. Because for centuries you know for 246 years of enslavement and I have to remind people 12 generations of an slave meant 12 generations of in slavery you know how many greats do you had to grandparent to get that back 216-1000 until 863 and that gives you a sense of how long all of these people were miscast into an artificial hierarchy as to what they were permitted to do or risk death if they did not do that and 11 of fact about this whole idea of where we are right now you know to sort of cosmically I think in terms of in this life of this way no adult alive today will live to see a time when the time of a slave meant was equal to the time of freedom. And so that shows you that this history is long and the history is deep you know when you go to other countries you go and other parts of the world in Europe or in the other places and the history goes so far back and in the people in Portugal can still remember that you know well you know there was that you know there was a catastrophe in the 15th century we still haven't gotten over that yet here I think about writing about you know think about how this is really not that long ago in a sense of generations in the sense of even sort of I would view it almost cellular memory in the bones of a people I actually was also encouraged by the fact that after the Charleston mother Emmanuel shootings the Commonwealth of Virginia rose to the occasion and the Richmond Times Dispatch you know that the editorial board said that there should be a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and that it should come from Virginia which was the capital of the Confederacy and the solutions a lie in. The south I believe I really believe that the solutions lie in the sun. You can listen again and share this conversation with Isabel Wilkerson through our website on being dot org I'm Krista Tippett on Being continues in a moment support for on being with Krista Tippett comes from the Fetzer Institute helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world learn more at Fetzer dot org. A wall a fence surveillance President Trump has made border security a priority but what will it look like and how much will the cost to build in one year we could build it from much less money that what they're talking about for now the price tag is $18000000000.00 And Lou Garcia Navarro we'll hear the debate Sunday on Weekend Edition from n.p.r. News. This morning at 8 o'clock on w d.d.e. Delaware Public Media. It's France's lead this week we're all about Mexican food in America we've got a taste test of tortillas a story about the fascinating restaurant that inspired Taco Bell and chefs advice on how to make freestyle talk Ohs and classic Mexican desserts all that and more on the Splendid Table the show for curious cooks and eaters from a.t.f. . Today at noon on 91 point one w. D.d.e. From Delaware Public Media. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today I'm with the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson in a public event at the University of North Carolina Asheville she wrote the epic work of narrative nonfiction The Warmth of Other Suns about the great migration of nearly 6000000 African-Americans from the south to the north of the United States in the 20th century we are exploring the light her revelations shed on the promise and challenges of now. I wanted to read something that this was a blog. A minister in rural New England if you say you know this I don't I don't I guess it's called that it's called faith in the ordinary in New Hampshire the 3rd white estate in the u.s. Where the white population of 96 percent and a state that borders numbers one into Maine at 96.9 percent Vermont at 96.7 percent we have to work harder to make these connections if you haven't read it try and find a book called The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel ochers and it is hands down the best work of nonfiction I have ever read it tells the story of how the Jim Crow laws and their accompanying attitudes shaped the lives of 3 black Americans who came north during the 20th century when I was reading it I kept saying over and over again like I had no idea I had no idea and then we may be clueless and awkward around the subject of race but we know what the Gospel demands that we keep working at being better neighbors. I think about that so much these days about this work of knowing our neighbors who are strangers and that that in fact is the and is the immediate work that in fact is not evident how we do it because we're so segregated in so many ways in our communities. But it's possible people must ask you this question I mean I wonder how. If there's a device you get more thoughts you have that's terrible our thoughts here have about about this work of coming to know our neighbors who are strangers of being neighbors just that. Well I think I want to start to answer the question with a fundamental. Sad recognition with these police using and then gets the answer and that is that there are so many things disturbing about them and the videos are showing them but I think that you know people can disagree on what the officer was thinking of what them what were the circumstances of his arrival what he saw what he thought and these are split 2nd decisions there are a lot of things going on. And often they there's a refrain that comes across as I feared for my life I didn't know I didn't know it and now I fear for my life but I think the human question that is disturbing and hard to reckon with is what is happening in these cases after the person is down. And I think that all of us have to think about what is it that we're hearing and what is it that we're seeing why is it that basic human response to a person in distress. Why is it that 1st aid cannot be ministered to people once they are bleeding on the ground. Where is the threat once they are already you know death why can't they even if they're not equipped and I would assume that an officer of the peace would be equipped but I'm not an expert on this but even the basic human response to take the hand of someone whose life is slipping away from them and to comfort them that is the essential missing piece which is empathy empathy and recognition and the common humanity of another person and as I said we can disagree on this the circumstances in the teeth details in the so-called facts of the of the situation but after the person is down where is the humanity and I think it calls upon all of us to recognize I think the need for radical empathy empathy is not pity or sympathy in which you are looked at you know. You're looking down on someone and feeling sorry for them sympathy maybe looking across at someone and feeling bad for them yeah empathy getting means getting inside of them and understanding their reality and looking at their situation and saying not what would I do if I were in their position but what are they doing why are they doing what they're doing from the perspective of what they have endured and that is an additional step that there are multiple steps that a person has to take to really be open to that you know and all thank you. And all of these discussions about what's going on now. Where so very divided and we're focused there's such a focus on other and other can mean all kinds of things and so people will often say why is it that those people do that. Saying the only answer to that question is why do human beings do what they do when they are in that situation and it calls for radical empathy in order to put ourselves inside the experiences of another and to allow ourselves the pain allow ourselves the heartbreak allow ourselves the sense of hopelessness whatever it may be that they're experiencing and you know I think one of the reasons that we're in the situation that we're in and in our country is because you know the laws have been changed you know lots of laws were passed actually in the 860 s. Right and then they had to be you know revisited in the 1960 s. And why is that partly I think it's an indication that the laws are necessary but they're not sufficient and that we recognize we recognize that the laws can be changed if the Hearts have not changed. And so I view myself as on kind of a mission you know to to to change the country or the world one heart at a time and it's a tough it's a tough you know it's a tough thing to do I mean I feel as if the heart is the last frontier and because we have tried so many other things and the laws that we've passed that we thought were written in granite we see can be erased and are in peril if as a collective we do not recognize why I also believe it in the time of working on this book and it's you know it's multidisciplinary the sociology there's psychology there's economics all of these things they're in there but I think the foundation of all of those disciplines comes down to the history when you go to the doctor before you can even see the doctor. The very 1st thing they do is they give you all of these pages to fill out and they before the doctor will even see you he wants to know your history. He doesn't want to know just your history he wants to know your mother's history right he wants to know your father's history they may go back to your grandmother and your grandfather on both sides and that's before he will even see you you cannot diagnose a problem until you know the history of the problem that you're trying to resolve I think you know you were asking about this book and how it's moved around in the world I think this book is proof or the response to it is proof that it's not as hard as it has to as you might hear it will be that actually you can find it. Not just in lightning but healing but I think part of the reason you made it not as hard if you opened up the fact that it's not as hard as it has to be is that you humanize the history right and I think that this minister is on to something when I say we need to see our neighbors I mean and I think changing your heart is that a synonym for overcoming an unconscious bias right every in there's things that there are these things that it's becoming more conscious about what's going on inside us and then working with that. Another thing we're learning is that empathy is and this is a problem with journalism frankly empathy is not triggered by a statistic now it's triggered by you know it's not triggered and we should talk about this before we finish by now millions of people moving across Europe absolutely in search of survival and freedom and just the ability to create a life for their children we cannot take that in but we can take in every once in a while the face of one child and that. Enables us to take and and Normandy of the tragedy I mean I feel like everything you just said also explained this is how and this is something where I feel like we could frame it this way we could reckon with this better have this is not this moment when it's not just a social crisis and not just a political crisis it's a spiritual crisis and as much as we have to deal with it at those other levels we have to deal with it at this level in terms of who we are because really that's all that's left I mean we have dealt with that economy gets dealt with the laws. That are there front and center and I think that as a species we know to do we know how to do that yeah it's the spiritual aspect of their human condition remained the human heart and examining it. And allowing us ourselves to feel the pain of others you know you don't want to feel your own pain why would you want to feel someone else's pain. So it's I think as an act of love and an act of faith to allow yourself to feel the pain of another. I think that's also why we have to accompany each other because it's not something that any of us welcomes to feel that pain but we do know that if we take something like that on together it can become bearable so I mean that's why I feel it's so important to have a group of us in this room together. Thinking about these things together. I'm Krista Tippett and this is On Being today with journalist Isabel Wilkerson the author of The Warmth of Other Suns. There's so much else we could talk about I do want to say that as I was reading this book and again this is this is not something you could imagine in 2010 and I was thinking about the refugee crisis in our midst now. And it's not so much an American crisis but it is because we are all connected and of course we have refugees coming here you told me last night a story about a woman from a very humorous tell that yeah. It stays with me and actually her daughter is here somewhere which is amazing it reminded me of and I should preface it by saying that another thing about my father. My father had been to ski airmen and after the war they found it very difficult to find work they could as as pilots no one would hire them as pilots even though they were considered among the best that it come out of the war and so he had to remake itself yet again and. In doing that he chose a totally different path he became a civil engineer so my father was literally a builder of bridges and I carry that tradition and that part of him into the work that I do and it's only in the Times this book has come out that I realized that that's the reason why const they made these disjuncture throughout the book to immigrants and to recognizing that the people the great migration is African-Americans who many people might have been told they have nothing in common with their totally different theirs or their that actually did the very same thing that the ancestors of so many people in this country did but any case I when the book 1st came out I didn't know. What was how that was going to play out and I there was I was giving out talk on Long Island. Really bitterly rainy day but it was a wonderful turnout and at the end of the talk there was a very long signing line the book just been out there's a lot of excitement and at the front of the signing line was this very minute to woman grandmotherly figure she had somehow elbowed her way to the front of the line I don't know how she did it but there she was she her arms were filled with books that she had brought she wanted me to. Signed them but her eyes were red and she was saying I just I just cannot talk about this books that I just read the book I just I just but I just cannot talk about this book she said if I start talking about the book I'm going to cry for sure she said I can't talk about this book because this book is my story she said I'm an immigrant from Greece and this is my story and her name was Anna Stephanie to us and I don't think she would mind if I meant and I ended up going to evidence was so floored by that we got our pictures taken and it was a such a lovely moment and she said she was going to have the rest of revamp to read it then out and events in Brooklyn she showed up at that again we you know we see was in tears I was in tears we have never really spoken because we're always just like you know in tears. And that was that bridge across the artificial barriers you know that's that's a communing across the expanse it was a speed a full coming together that was so many things have come as a result of this book and it's one of so many. Various awards and notes but but that was actually within my heart my hope that it could cross boundaries and I've had many many many experiences and I think as a reader what this opens up in the imagination is the lives of beauty and struggle and nobility that are in that those crowds that we see and you stop being able to see them as crowds as as abstractions refugees. There's so much else we could talk about I want to read actually the last paragraph of the book and. And just just reflect with you a little bit on that. Over the decades her. Aps the wrong questions have been asked about the Great Migration Perhaps it is not a question of whether the migrants brought good or will so the cities they fled to or were pushed or pulled to their destinations but a question of how they summoned the courage to leave in the 1st place or how they found the will to press beyond the forces against them and the faith in a country that had rejected them for so long by their actions they did not dream the American dream they will get into being by a definition of their own choosing they did not ask to be accepted but declared themselves the Americans that perhaps a few others recognize but that they had always been deep within their hearts. So you trace these stories of these individuals these particular stories of this universal drama. And you really as you said what do you say you channel these people enter brain and heart and heart and so what did you learn what do you carry around with you about what it means to be human through these lives that you carry with you now. Well I really. Came to believe in to know I that we all have so much more in common than we've been led to believe and that we've been sadly tragically assigned roles as if we're going to play them as is this is what these people do and that's what these people do and that's what these people do and the tragedy is that regardless of which side meant you had been put into that might not have been your strength at all and I gained in such. A thing as this has been out for 6 years I spent 15 years on it researching and writing it I have never grown weary of talking about it every time I talk about it I gave a new appreciation and gratitude and amazement at. What they were able to do one of the things that I hope to do was to bring the invisible people into the light they never were being written about we just skip from in a civil war to civil rights in this entire part of our country's history and their lives generations actually of people skipped over and not recognize and I felt that it deserved its own place and recognition I believe that you know the you know sort of bringing the invisible people to the light would help all of us to understand and see ourselves better because we've been so affected by what they did and what these people did I mean by sheer force of will they were able to make the of mancipation proclamation live up to its name in the in their individual lives to the degree that they could and means that they were able to do with you know what the you know the what a President Abraham Lincoln was not fully able to do and they were able to do what the powers that be north and south were not really fully able to do and they it was about their agency and their making a decision for themselves and declaring themselves to be citizens which they had always been but it never been really truly recognized and I wanted to tell you that you know we were I was talking about these people from different backgrounds who she'll such a connection to them but to the people i women whose She said I to May remind her was exactly like her Norwegian grandmother I mean. But you know one of the very unusual things that that has happened that seems appropriate for the conversation that we're having is that. So many children or grandchildren children primarily of the Great Migration have come up to me and told me with a sense of healing and completion that this book was the last book that their parent read before their they died. And you would think that it would be incredibly tragic and sad but it's the exact opposite the children were grateful that. Their parents have had the chance to read this before it was too late Remember these people didn't talk about their experience is that it's also it's not I mean these 3 . Show how people continue to create lives full lives even with these circumstances and through these circumstances. And you don't know how to react when someone says this is the last book that you know my mother or father read before they died. But they say it was such joy and gratitude and they say that it allowed them to come to terms with all that they had endured and to and to give their suffering some meaning and to recognize that they had not been alone but that they had been part of something bigger some connection to you know immigrants around the world other people who come up from the south as they had and and others who had been able to express their freedom and their individuality and the way they had chosen that there was a peaceful and their view. Fulfilling and healing way to have left this planet you something you said oh you you spoke about how part of what drives you as an aspiration to find strength in the discovery of what is true. And I think what you're describing is however hard the truth is. It does complete us it isn't necessary path to. I'm not the 1st to say it seems to set some people free yeah. That's a great great last word I've got Isabel Wilkerson thank you so much and what a delight it's about. Isabel Wilkerson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2016 by President Barack Obama for championing the stories of an unsung history her book The Warmth of Other Suns The Epic Story of America's Great Migration won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and has won many other accolades I interviewed her as part of the faith and Literature Festival at the University of North Carolina Asheville in partnership with public radio station. The Wake Forest School of Divinity. Is. Maya Terrell. Special thanks this week to Richard chess Holly beverage Fred Benson and to David Finegold and Barbara sayer and all of our friends at. Asheville. Our lovely theme music has provided and composed by Keating and the last place you hear singing our final credits is hip hop artist. Was created at American Public Media for funding partners including the Fetzer Institute. Helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world find them at Fetzer dot org Callia pay a foundation working to create a future where universal spiritual values form the foundation of how we care for our common home the George Family Foundation in support of the Civil Conversations Project the Henry Luce foundation in support of public theology reimagined the Osprey Foundation a catalyst for empowered healthy and fulfilled lives and the Lilly Endowment and Indianapolis based private family foundation dedicated to its founders interests in religion community development and education. Being its to beat it. Public Radio Exchange and is Krista Tippett public production. Delaware Public Media is now on i Tunes radio get the local news and programs that matter to you wherever you are whenever you'd like Add us to your station list today in this week's On the media the man who supervised the writing of the Pentagon Papers says the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan prove that American policymakers have never read them. Without knowing that's the essential message of the Pentagon Papers Don't miss this week's On the media from w n y r c. Later today at 3 a 91 point one w. D.d.e. From Delaware public media from Delaware State University this is 91 point one w. D.d.e. Dover broadcasting a collaboration with the University of Delaware w d d e source for n.p.r. News online and streaming at w d t e dot org. From n.p.r. News in Washington d.c. This is Weekend Edition. Of our good morning throughout the show today we will look at the immigration debate here from immigrants and those in the Republican Party who are reaching out to them at a moment when the president is being criticized for some very offensive comments also talk to border Mera about how the national conversation about the wall is playing out in a city where if the president gets what he wants it's going to be built and in many parts of the country there aren't enough nurses for our aging population we'll meet 2 nurses one who's just starting out and another who's a veteran about how their field is changing it's Sunday January 14th 2018 Be sure to listen up he's next. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington on Giles night or at least 19 people are now confirmed dead following last week's mudslides in Southern California and while authorities in Santa Barbara County say they are still in rescue mode they acknowledge that hopes of finding more survivors are dwindling Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown every hour remains less likely that we will find anyone alive. There is always hope several people remain missing an army of rescuers and recovery workers remain in the town of Mt to see though 5 days after the mudslides officials in whole by under fire for the false alert sent to smartphones about a missile threat the alerts sent yesterday morning panic thousands of Hawaii residents and visitors Jackie young from Hawaii Public Radio reports at 8 o 7 am state emergency officials mistakenly sent out a text alert that a ballistic missile was inbound to have and to seek immediate shelter the one Alou police switchboard was overwhelmed by more than 5000 callers on Oahu drivers jammed roadway tunnels looking for protection university students defunct willed war to air raid shelters tourists in Waikiki call their loved ones on the mainland to say goodbye it wasn't until about 40 minutes later that state officials issued a correction saying it was a drill gone terribly wrong given or gave it a promise procedures would be changed to ensure it doesn't happen again for n.p.r. News I'm Jackie young in Honolulu state lawmakers say they will hold a hearing on the matter this Friday and Federal Communications Commission chairman says the f.c.c. Will investigate the f.c.c. Has jurisdiction over the Emergency Alert System 7 years ago today Tunisians forced a dictator from power beginning the country's transformation into a democracy and inspiring the Arab Spring protests N.P.R.'s was Sherlock says for Dede Tunisians this time of year both this. Is a time of both celebration and frustration was the way. In downtown Tunis crowds gathered to mark the anniversary of the ouster of President Jean Aberdeen Ben Ali people dance to songs from the days of the 2011 revolution they chant and celebrate freedom now they say Tunisians can voice their opinions they can speak freely without fearing arrest as they used to in the dark days of the country's dictatorship but there's also immense frustration personal freedoms have improved they say but the economy has not.