A segregated train ride is only the beginning.

For a Colored family, courage, hope, and despair in just the right measure can lead to the unthinkable. It was 1943, and it's likely Sara and Ben Jameson had never thought seriously about leaving home. Leaving people and places they knew and loved, until they had children of their own. It's likely, until they saw the future through the eyes of their children, they had made peace with substandard housing, education, and lack of opportunity. But when they had children of their own, they gathered their courage and hope, set aside despair, and made the move. Theirs was the first generation, as part of the Great Migration, to settle in mass outside of the South.

Moving to Berkeley, California included wishes for a nice home, good schools, and good jobs. But what they got was red-lining and were only welcomed in South Berkeley, in an all-Colored, working-class neighborhood where they faced many of the problems they had left behind. But they did what they had always done, they made it work. Their neighborhood was their fiefdom, and as parents they were beacons. And because of their sacrifices and their example, their children became their wildest dreams.

Join the Jameson family as they lovingly, with courage and determination, face the decades, 1943 through 2000.