Over the course of six decades, some six million black southerners left the land of their forefathers and fanned out across the country for an uncertain existence in nearly every other corner of America.
-- Author (Part 1 paragraph Page 9)

Importance: This quote captures the vastness of the migration from blacks from the North to the South. It underscores how miserable life in the South for blacks had been for so many to flee their homelands.

Colored people had to step off the curb when they passed a white person in town, and if the minutest privilege could be imagined, the ruling class claimed it.
-- Author (Part 2 paragraph Page 31)

Importance: This quote exemplifies the harsh treatment of blacks as secondary citizens in the deep south prior to 1970.

Florida went farther than some other slave states in the creativity of its repression: Slaves could not gather together to pray. They couldn’t leave their plantations, even for a walk, without written permission from...
-- Author (Part 2 paragraph Page 58)