It's a Long Way from Home
High School: Grades 9–12
Story
It's a Long Way from Home
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Louis's heart skipped a beat as the train slowed to a halt. He stood on tiptoe, straining to see beyond the sea of heads in front of him. His fellow travelers pushed him impatiently to get a look. Louis tried in vain not to push the people in front of him.
Suddenly the door opened. The push from the people behind Louis was so great he hardly had to put his foot on a step; he was carried down the stairs and onto the platform of Central Station in the big bustling city of Chicago in the great northern state of Illinois.
He had heard about this station. It was the entry to a new way of life for young men like himself. Central Station was the door to his future and for Louis, it symbolized the chance to be something other than a sharecropper like his parents and grandparents before him.1It was a chance to see something of the great big world outside of Mississippi. It was a chance to spread his wings. It was a chance for freedom.
Louis looked up and down the platform for his cousin, Robert. He had only seen him once before when they were kids. "Hey, hey, over here, Louis, I'm over here!" Robert shouted. He looked and acted the same—the sparkling eyes and the big, welcoming smile. Louis shyly held out his hand, but Robert grabbed him and hugged him.
Louis noticed Robert's suit. It was new; his pants were pleated, the lapels were wide, and his shoes were shiny. Louis shifted his weight from side-to-side. He adjusted his collar and tugged at the sleeves of his suit coat. There were new leather patches on the elbows, but Louis couldn't help but feel that they were a signal to the world that the suit had been worn by his father and brother before him. His mother had always reassured him that he didn't need a lot of clothes, just a bar of soap to make him clean and presentable. But his mother wasn't on the platform looking at his nattily attired cousin.
Robert exclaimed, "You daydreaming, or what? Come on! Aunt Celia told me I had to bring you home right away, because I've got to show you your new home. She's worried about her little grand-nephew coming to the big, bad city for the first time. But don't worry about her, I'll just tell her your train got in late."
Louis could hardly keep track of Robert's excited talk as he jumped from subject to subject. One second it was Aunt Celia, the next it was Louis's future. "We'll get you all set up," Robert assured him. "Maybe you can find a job in a hotel or in the stockyards where my Dad and I work. No matter what happens, I'll tell you this, the year is 1922 and being here is better than milking some cows and chasing chickens."
Louis suddenly felt excited at the thought of work in the big city. He didn't want to be a sharecropper; he didn't want to raise crops on farm land that didn't belong to him. He got angry whenever his father gave the landlord not only rent but also a share of their crops they had worked so hard to harvest.
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Robert led the way out of Central Station one step ahead of Louis. He pointed to the tall buildings downtown, north of the station. Then with a wave of his hand to the left or to the right Robert talked about the exciting world of the South Side. Louis had never seen anything like it. In Mississippi the folks he knew hardly owned anything except the clothes on their backs. But here there were restaurants, flower shops, drugstores with all black customers. What impressed Louis even more was that Robert told him this was an area in the city where blacks owned most of the businesses, too.2
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