It’s significant that George’s family freed itself from the abuses of plantation life through
migration—the same tool that George later uses to improve his own life and that was long Black Americans’ only option for achieving freedom from slavery. Wilkerson situates the Great Migration within this broader historical context. Yet, at the same time, George’s attempts to avoid his problems through migration at the beginning of his life backfire. Leaving home doesn’t make his life much better, and this shows that migration isn’t always a silver bullet to life’s problems.