They went where the train went. Clutching tickets. Piled suitcases tied with rope. To a cafe in Norfolk. A government job in Washington. A Philadelphia dock. A season of day’s work in the Bronx. A school year in Brooklyn. The Atlantic Coast Line took them. It brought them back. It took them again.

Atlantic Coast Line system map, circa 1900. Wilson is midway through the column of stops stacked across eastern North Carolina along the stretch of railroad that had formerly been the Wilmington & Weldon.

Standing in the railroad crossing at Nash Street, passenger train station at left, looking North. Wilson, May 2016.