When Adele Flattow's grandfather and great uncle both died suddenly. It would forever alter the course of both sides of her family line, catapulting them onto paths that would eventually cross.

In 1924, when the Flattow family's fortunes were changed overnight.

Adele's father, Sydney, was just eight years old.

It was just the father dying early, the mother can't manage to take care of the four children.

There wasn't like enough resources to keep the whole family together. So that's you know why

they got split up.

Sydney was the eldest of four siblings.

Two were sent to New Orleans.

One was kept in Baton Rouge.

And Sydney, he ended up more than 2,000 miles away in California.

While this was a lonely journey for young Sydney, countless others were making the same

faithful trip west.

During the early part of the 20th century about 2 million

black southerners would move to cities north and west looking for better

opportunities or to escape the racial violence of the Jim Crow South.

This was the first wave of the Great Migration,

and ultimately it would reshape the social, political, and economic complexion of America.

And so Sidney Flatto would board a train,

sent to live with an aunt and an uncle who didn't have kids,

but who would raise him as their own.

He actually probably had a better life than he would have had it if he stayed in in Louisiana in terms of being able to get education, which I guess his aunt and uncle must have paid for and plus he was working to you know

Sydney made the most of this new start he was a good student and in 1934 was admitted to UC Berkeley, but it wasn't easy.

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