An extraordinary tale, well told in a 550+ page book. Focusing on three characters who left different parts of the South for different reasons at different times and went to different cities in the north or west, Wilkerson weaves a combination sociological dissertation, historical summary and novelistic adventure into this masterful book about the six million Blacks who left the South between 1915-1970 to change the face of the nation.

• Ida Mae Brandon Gladney left sharecropping in Chickasaw County, New Jersey in 1937 to set up in Chicago after heading to her sister in Milwaukee. Her husband had had a run-in with the owner of their sharecrop over his beating up her husband’s cousin.
• George Swanson Starling left Weldwood, Florida in 1945 after he was threatened with lynching after organizing fruit pickers. He settled in Harlem and worked for 35 years as a train attendant while raising a family.
• Robert Joseph Pershing Foster left Monroe, Louisiana in 1953. A surgeon who had served in the US Army, the son of educators, he went to Louisiana after marrying the daughter of the president of Atlanta’s black graduate university. He died a successful physician though a big gambler in California.

How these three lives were changed and how the six million changed the North as well as the South made for a great book.