- [Host] Of all the lost terminals, Central Station on the lakefront, home to the Illinois Central Railroad, probably did more than any other to mark a transformative time in Chicago history.

It stood here, near Michigan Avenue and Roosevelt Road, on tracks still used by the Metra Electric and South Shore lines.

- Every time I see that train coming or going, I do.

I think about the dreams, and the possibility, and the people who had all of their hopes invested in that train, right?

Invested in that ride, and how they made the city that made me.

- [Host] Author, poet, and professor, Eve Ewing, is talking about the Great Migration, the period between 1910 and 1970 that saw more than 7 million Southern African Americans move to Northern cities.

The Illinois Central Railroad brought many of the half million who settled in Chicago.

- We can imagine people arriving right at the spot in their Sunday best, and think about what a momentous occasion this must have been for folks.

- Kind of a sacred space.

- It's magical.

It's absolutely magical.

- [Host] Even after emancipation, Southern landowners kept Black people in hopeless debt as sharecroppers.

Many learned about better opportunities in the North from articles published in the "Chicago Defender" newspaper and distributed clandestinely by Pullman Porters.

- And they would say it's better to freeze to death as a free person than it is to die warm in bondage in the South.

During the Great Migration, the train really became a very literal symbol of dreaming, a symbol of freedom for Black people in the South.

- What did they find when they got here?

- You know, like most stories of the promised land, Chicago partially delivered and partially didn't.

There was housing segregation.

There was employment segregation.

There was educational segregation.

- [Host] By the end of the Great Migration, the Black population in Chicago had increased more than 30-fold, and while there were barriers to their dreams here, many did find a better life, and some became famous, like "Ebony" and "Jet" magazine publisher, John H. Johnson, and the great author, Richard Wright.

- We can think about the blues.

Think about people like Buddy Guy, people like Muddy Waters.

We can imagine this thread of culture that binds together these two places, but it wasn't just an invisible cultural thread.

It was literally the rail line, right?

For me, every time I see a train, hear a train, ride a train, I still feel that flicker, that childhood flicker that something is possible.

(train whooshes)