They Followed the North Wind

North Wind is an unflinching historical record of Black American life from 1865 to 1965, one hundred years that defined the long struggle from emancipation to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Dr. Jack Washington wrote not simply as a historian but as a man who understood that history is not the past. It is the present in disguise. From the betrayals of Reconstruction to the rise of Jim Crow, from the Great Migration to the Civil Rights Movement, North Wind documents the legislation, the court decisions, the economic structures, the cultural erasures, and the acts of resistance that together constitute the full and unsparing truth of one hundred years of Black American life.
This is not history at a distance. It is history from the inside, told by a scholar who lived within the very community whose story he devoted his life to preserving. Completed by his daughter, Dr. Dawne Washington, North Wind stands as Dr. Jack Washington's final testimony and his most enduring gift. In recognition of the intergenerational scholarly contribution of this father and daughter work, with the support and encouragement of Cornel West, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary.