This image is one of sixty panels created by African American artist Jacob Lawrence in his extended work The Migration Series. The paintings were done with casein tempera (a type of water-soluble paint with a milk base) on hardboard. Taken together, the paintings document the Great Migration, the term that refers to the mass movement of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North that took place largely between the two world wars. During those years, Black southerners were fleeing the segregation and racial oppression of the South in search of better jobs and a better life. This panel is the first of the series and indicates that the destination cities for many migrating Blacks were Chicago, New York, and St. Louis.