Hattie Jacobs has a secret dream: to go to school to become a teacher. But her parents were formerly enslaved and are struggling to survive in Nashville, Tennessee, after Reconstruction. When the Jacobs family joins the Great Exodus of 1879 to Kansas, their journey in search of a better life is filled with danger and hardship. Will they make it to the Mississippi River unharmed? What will be waiting for them in Kansas, and will it live up to their dreams?

It’s the storytellers that preserve a nation’s history. But what happens when some stories are silenced? The I Am America series features fictional stories based on important historical events about people whose voices have been excluded, lost, or forgotten over time.