South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation

Perry, a Philadelphia resident, begins her trek through the Southern US in the region most adjacent to her current home. Her journey opens in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, the historical site that housed a federal armory and was raided by the white abolitionist John Brown in hopes of launching an uprising against enslavement. As a Black woman traveling into an unknown area that is stereotyped as backward and racist, Perry feels that this historic site is one of the safest places in “mountain country” to begin her journey. As she notes, West Virginia split from the state of Virginia as an “anti-slavery territory” (5) and belonged to the Union. However, Perry is nervous about traveling to West Virginia, and friends warn her against going alone to this state that “has succumbed to the worst of Whiteness, according to everyday scuttlebutt and assumption” (8).

Harpers Ferry is also the site of Storer College, a school for emancipated people that grew into an institution of higher education for Black Americans. The Niagara Movement, a social justice organization that included the noteworthy academic and activist W. E. B. Du Bois, held its second meeting there after Reconstruction collapsed in the wake of the Civil War and