there is a monroe louisiana club in los angeles. there are hundreds as you can imagine texas clubs in los angeles and there are similar clubs in chicago and also in detroit and in new york. i went to all those places to find them. i was doing essentially a casting call and i had this one case where i wanted-- went into a senior center in los angeles and i would go in and i would say i am working on a book about the migration. generally i had a story, general post that i would take to let them know what i was doing. this one place i went to in los angeles, you had to get on the schedule. there were certain days that were better to go than others. if it was bingo day, it wasn't a good day. if there was a state once that was a good day so i had gone on a good day but i was on the schedule and before me on the schedule was a representative from los angeles county department of aging and he passed out brochures to the seniors who had been gathered there and he said we are getting reports of our seniors being taken advantage of. there are

a captain but couldn't practice in his own hometown hospital in monroe, louisiana. so he set out on a treacherous journey across the desert by himself to get to california. he was not able to stop past the state of texas as he'd expected he would be able to do, and he had to drive the full length of multiple states without rest because nobody told him that jim crow was not just this south, but was also in the west. it was a journey that i attempted to recreate in order to experience what he experienced. it is all part of the research i did for this book, so you can begin to see why it took 15 years to get this done. i wanted to know what it was like to drive through the desert without sleep along the same route he had taken, to have your fingers swell up and ache, your eyelids grow heavy from exhaustion in the pitch black of night. my participants rode with me. -- parents rode with me. it was all my father could do to take the wheel from me, but i wouldn't let him because i told him, i must do this myself, i must experience what he did. dr. foster did not have anyon

in spite of all of that knowing he was rejected in the new land he had chosen for himself in monroe, louisiana. i wanted to recreate that. we made as far as you mop, errors on a. my parents began to fear as i had driven, if you had seen the road map you wanted, i rented a buick and we got to this part where i was very off the road and my parents said we must stop the car. they had to go through the experience of not knowing whether to stop having to gather up or pack volvo food you might possibly need. all the ice and water you might need if your radiator went out and make sure you had a spare tire. my parents have been through that. they said to me stop the car. we have been through this before ourselves and if you won't stop let us out. so we stopped in you love, arizona, he had not had that choice but it was no longer 1953. it was so inspiring because of how far we have come that i could not fully recreate the letter because we were passing places like at and my parents said we have been there and done that so let's stop. >> i remember i wrote in the margins he did this without a cellphone.