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This train traces the route of black migration north
CHICAGO
The South Side of Chicago may not seem the likeliest place to begin a journey on the train they call the City of New Orleans. But for this trip, it is the best place.
It is here that he stands atop a mound of shoe soles at Martin Luther King Drive and 25th Street, his suitcase barely held together by rope, contents threatening to spill into the winter wind. He is the statue that tells a million and more stories - of African-American migrants who fled the rural South for the industrial North. Beside him is a McDonald's restaurant with displays honoring Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Behind him is a succession of infamously dangerous housing projects.
Elbow drooping, he waves tentatively at his unknowable future. The train journey ahead of me, with stopovers in big cities and whistle-stops, for a self-guided tour of African-American history, promises to teach something about his past.
At Chicago's Union Station, the two-tiered City of New Orleans towers over the chilly platform. Ice caked around its cables, it hisses like an impatient sea monster. I climb to the upper level and settle in, my heart beating double time with anticipation.
My euphoria is not universal.
"I can't believe we have to sleep like this," a girl complains to her father about the reclining chair that will double as her bed.
She has a point. But this is the City of New Orleans' true legacy. Whereas the luxurious and long-gone Panama Limited meant sleeping cars with fine china and pull-down wash basins, the City of New Orleans meant coach seating.
The Amtrak version is a hybrid - sleeping cars for some, seats for most. And unaffected customer service for all.
Joy works in food services, she explains, but because the train is packed, she's helping out the attendants.
She gives directions and a caution.
"Stay where your hat check is," she says of the cards above our heads, identifying our destinations.
"Otherwise, you'll ride all the way with us and you'll wake up in New Orleans. And my house is full. ... Well, no it's not, but it's a closet."
As we rumble through the night in rural Illinois, there's little to see, but time enough to meet a fellow passenger - a young African-American woman visiting Southern cousins for the first time - and enjoy the clatter, rhythm, and sway of the ride.
An hour late, and long past midnight, we reach Centralia, Ill.
Like half of the stops the City of New Orleans makes, Centralia is an old railroad town.
The displays at the Historical Museum are far-ranging, from articles about the 1947 mining disaster that killed 111 to a tribute to Jim Brady, Ronald Reagan's press secretary.
There are also high school graduation photos. Through 1946, black students are relegated to the bottom row.
A black presence in Centralia was first felt in the 1850s, when numerous runaway slaves hid in local homes and barns before escaping north. After Emancipation, many more came to settle. In 1895, their alderman, Henry Bibb, demanded an end to segregated grade schools.
