Content Warning: This section of the guide includes incidents of racial discrimination and violence present in the source text.

Tommie’s narration describes how, between 1910 and 1970, more than six million African Americans left the South, looking to leave behind Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, the Ku Klux Klan, discrimination, and poverty. At first, many went to northern cities like Detroit, Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC, to take jobs in factories. Then, another wave of African Americans went to California, including Tommie’s family, who settled in Stratford. The novel depicts Tommie’s family living in a labor camp, sharing an outhouse and shower with other families. They still don’t own the land they work on.

One day, the bus taking Tommie, his family, and others from the labor camp to the fields is stopped by the head of the Stratford Elementary School. He asks if there are any school-aged children on board and then says that the children are required to exit the bus. At first, Tommie’s father is hesitant, but when he learns that children in California are required to go to school, he relents, telling his children that he’d be doing better in life if he had received an education.