For some reason, I previously couldn’t seem to link the mass exodus of African-Americans from the South to the term “The Great Migration,” probably because I associated the term with a more global movement rather than a national one, but I guess that is besides the point.

On a more relevant note, one part of the excerpt(s) that really stood out to me was the section describing Ida Mae’s experience with the white farmer, who liked colored people, but would get drunk on Fridays and go around shooting people:

“A barrel of cornmeal was right next to her, and she saw it and jumped inside. She sank into the grit cushion of meal with her chin digging into her knees. All the while, the man hollered and grunted around her, and the bullets made the pinging noises of metal against tin. She pulled the top over her head and tried not to breathe. She stayed in the barrel until the shooting and the cussing stopped.”
Right away, this reminded me of a story my grandmother used to tell. When she was a little girl living in China, she tried to find some place to hide while the Japanese were invading and shooting everywhere. She hid underwater, beneath the surface of a pond, not moving so the Japanese soldiers wouldn’t realize she was there. While she hid, a bunch of sea creatures ate away at her legs, sucking and biting, but there was nothing she could do because she didn’t want to be killed. I was shocked by the similarities of the two stories, so of course I had to bring that up.

Another part that stood out to me was the Carter brothers being hanged for “[saying] something to the white lady.” It first reminded me of Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman, and then I drew closer to the modern-day. My friend’s mom works at a hospital in Manhasset, NY, not too far from NYC and very close to my hometown, where two African American orderlies filed a lawsuit in 2013, alleging repeated racist harassment which included finding a noose hanging on one of their lockers. The technician, Mario Nistico, admitted to hanging the noose, and in the suit, Dr. Charles Militana is quoted as saying “How can Obama be smart? He is black.”
Even though slavery is outlawed, racism is sadly still very much alive to this day.