Jim Crow South

She did tell me one story and it was the reason that she never went back down South for the rest of her life. She boarded an Amtrak train in Chicago, IL heading to Memphis, TN to see her mother. While in Chicago, she was allow to sit anywhere that she wanted on the train HOWEVER, once the train was past the imaginary Mason-Dixon line, my grandmother was forced to the back of the train and treated like a piece of dirt. That was the one and only story that she ever told me about the South.

I moved to Brooklyn, a month to the day after my Grandmother Ruby Jean transitioned. Chicago could never feel like home to again. I wandered through Harlem and thought about my grandmother because honestly, she is a mystery to me. Noone knew anything about her life before coming to Chicago. It is understandable WHO WOULD want to talk about the Jim Crow South, lynchings and cotton picking.