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across the sea, people peered up through the barbed wire at guard towers. The story being told tojustify the machine guns was one of the prisoners’ subhuman race. It was a story told with phrases that the defenders of slavery had coined to claim their righteous hold on Ivy when he had been a child. Somewhere, across the sea, a man in a gulag huddled under a blanket woven from cotton picked by Anderson’s and Ivy’s lost cousins. Somewhere, across the ocean, a child in a tavern entrance hearda record playing, heard a shocking combination of correctness and violation, a trumpet singing a new song. Somewhere, in fact at the far end of the same old slave trail that led through Danville and over the mountain, a mother huddled by Mississippi’s Highway 61 with her children. Put out with the coming of the tractor, she clutched a Chicago address in her hand. And somewhere—not far from Danville—lawstudents three generations from slavery huddled, planning the next move against Jim Crow and lynching.
    Another shift of wind shook the curtains, another minute had marched the sun further, to an angle that suddenly cast the deep wrinkles on Ivy’s face into relief. He rose, creaking audibly. Sometimes these old men wanted chewing tobacco; Anderson often gave the women snuff. Ivy’s hand only askedfor a grip. “I know a lot more I can tell you some other time; I’ll write it out. Just send me an envelope like you said and I’ll write it all down and send it to you.” 15 Anderson thanked him, and he stepped through the door the old man held open. He walked down the steps, opened the door of his black Ford, dropped his notepads on the passenger side, and slid into the driver’s seat. He startedthe engine and leaned his head out through the rolled-down window. The old man was still on the porch. “Be good now,” Lorenzo Ivy said, and turned back through the open door.

    Image A.6. Great-grandchildren of enslaved men and women, preparing to leave the cotton South, 1930s. Marion Wolcott, Works Progress Administration, 1939. Library of Congress.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
    Any book that takes this long to write inevitably leads one to incur multiple debts. The power of compound interest eventually renders those debts completely unpayable. I’ll just consider this a statement of bankruptcy. In this list of debts, I must begin with the fact that this book would never have seen the light of day without the unflagging support of Lara Heimert, editor and director of Basic Books. I can’t thank her enough for her support, patience, careful readings, and pointed questions. Other sources of support and expertise at the press and in the production process include Sandra Beris and Leah Stecher of Basic, line editor Roger Labrie, and copyeditor Kathy Streckfus. Linda Beltz Glaser and Syl Kacapyr of Cornell helped with promotion ideas, David Ethridge did the maps, and Lillian Baptist helped create the cover concept.
    Research funding came above all from Cornell University, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University of Miami, but also from the University of São Paulo, Tulane University, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the University of North Carolina, and Duke University.
    No work of history is possible without the support of the librarians, archivists, and institutions that make original research possible. Support and assistance came from: Cornell University Library and its entire staff; Duke University Library and its staff, especially Elizabeth Dunn, Nelda Webb, and Janie Morris; the University of North Carolina’s Southern Historical Collection, especially Laura Clark Brown, Tim West, Tim Pyatt, Shayera Tangri, and John White; Tulane University’s Howard-Tilton Library and its Special Collections Department; the New Orleans Notarial Archives; the New Orleans Public Library, especially Greg Osborne; the New York Public Library; the New York Historical Society; Louisiana State University’s Hill Memorial