Those trains heading north carried those who had toiled in the Delta fields for decades, their belongings packed into battered suitcases and cardboard boxes. For the Black families leaving, the journey was both a rupture and a rebirth, a departure from the familiar rhythm of the fields for the uncertain promise of Northern cities.
Image: Lange, Dorothea Lange, On MS Hwy 1 between Greenville and Clarksdale. Black American family being moved from AR to MS by white tenant. 1938. June.
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Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago—these names carried weight, sounding like possibility. The post-war boom was in full swing, and the clang of steel mills and hum of assembly lines promised steady wages, even if the jobs were hard and the racism subtler than in the South.
Image: A Black-American family leaves Florida for the North during the Great Depression.
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