Isabel Wilkerson was born in Washington, D.C. in 1961 to Black parents who had migrated from the South during the Great Migration. She was sent to affluent white schools as a child, where she gravitated toward children of immigrants from other countries. That experience led her to identify as a "daughter of immigrants," even though Black migrants from the American South to the American North have not often been labeled as immigrants.
Wilkerson attended Howard University, where she studied journalism, and interned at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post. This was the start of an outstanding journalistic career. Wilkerson led the Chicago bureau of the New York Times and became the...
