Summary

Former black residents of the Deep South often revisited their old homelands with tales of their great success and huge incomes. But they were generally presenting a skewed picture of life in the North and West that wasn’t much better than what they had in the South. The dreams of the young were of a world that was free and accepted them. Life was particularly hard on the young people because they had no option other than to stay.

Gilbert and Percy sat on the porch one night and become ear witnesses to the torture and death of a black man pursued by nameless white men who told the man that they were going to kill him. Gilbert was interviewed fifty years later and had never been able to get the man’s moans and pleas out of his mind...