Chapter 12 briefly describes Ida Mae Brandon Gladney’s first impressions upon arriving to Chicago from Mississippi. Chicago was “the first city she ever laid eyes on” (226), and it “looked like heaven” (226).

Chapter 13 briefly describes George Swanson Starling’s first impressions of Manhattan, where he “was hoping [he] would be able to live as a man and express [himself] in a manly way without the fear of getting lynched at night” (229).

Chapter 14 briefly describes Robert Joseph Pershing Foster’s first impressions of California, “one of the last receiving stations of the twentieth-century migration out of the South” (233), since “distance between California and the old Confederacy had discouraged all but the most determined of black pioneers” (233). Oakland was a disappointment, so he decided to travel south to Los Angeles, where he believed all of his dreams would come true and where he could “start living for the first time in his life” (237).