Six million people. 
 I just want to pause for a moment and let that number sink in before I keep going. 
 Six. Million. 
 That's how many black citizens relocated from the South to the North between 1915 and 1970. Minimum. As Wilkerson notes in-text, most scholars agree that the actual number was probably higher. 
 Anytime you have a demographic shift of that magnitude, it's going to cause unrest. And it did. Even in the desegregated North, these migrants had to compete with European immigrants for jobs and housing. For all the surface-freedom, ingrained prejudice ran deep. There was a lot stacked against them. And they came anyway, because they wanted a better life. 
 This is American history, in all its hopes and struggles. 
 Isabel Wilkerson deftly weaves historical context around the life stories of three migrants to shed light on this overlooked perid of American history. But I do have to dock a star for a certain level of editorial sensationalism that creeps into the text. It's clear that Wilkerson loves the people she was interviewing, and perhaps it's to be expected of her as a journalist, but I'm not a fan of inferences made without support. (Please don't let this be the dissuading word, however. By and large, the work is well-researched and cited.)