The Great Migration: One family's journey (For my niece Adrianna)

Summerton, South Carolina 1861

    He is born half-Black half-White: free in a time of pain and chains
    Yet grows to be a man of power and influence who owns the land that birthed him

      It is 1910. His daughter is born into a life of privilege, yet has before her a life of limits.
      She quietly and secretly is sent away to give birth to a son in the world of 1930.

    Her son is sent to fight in a police action; a Purple Heart is among his medals
      He comes back to his own country
    Tries to get a sandwich at a diner near Ft. Jackson..
      And is turned away
He is northern-bound in the year of 1953.

      Detroit, Michigan 1961
     
        He meets and marries a beautiful local girl. Their children have never seen a Southern sun
        Or felt its heat on their backs
        By the time they "go south"
        They are grown and finally
        See the places they've heard about. Or read of in history books...


        Canton, Michigan 2005
 
        His daughter has a little girl who laughs and plays
        She loves kindergarten and her friends. She loves to ask her
          parents about the Olden days- the nineteen seventies.

        Maybe one day she'll take a trip to Summerton.
        I hope she holds my hand as she walks the back roads,
        Feels the dust on her feet.
        Looks over the land and sees the past that is tied to her future.
     
        Maybe one day she will go
        To a place she does not yet know
        Exists.

    It is her home, after all
    Summerton patiently waits for her.
    The journey continues.