Summary

As illustrations of people traveling, the Ku Klux Klan holding torches, a Black man hanging dead, and a young mother crying fill the page, Smith explains how in the twentieth century, Black people “fled the rural South” (40). First people went to Northern cities as sharecropping jobs disappeared in the South, but people started heading west after World War II. Smith’s family ended up in Stratford, CA, north of Hollywood, and they moved into a labor camp. There the family worked just as they did in Texas, but here they had to share bathrooms with other workers. Smith notices how everything is greener in California.

Smith’s parents decided to move to California for more opportunities. Back in Texas, children had to work the fields whenever they could, leading them to only be able to go to school part...