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Centering the life and times of Zora Neal Hurston and the music of Lauryn Hill, this chapter begins to develop the Black Map. The chapter questions the currency of existing map, revealing the consequences of the white logics and practices upon which our maps are based. Also questioning the assumptions within the Great Migration narrative, this chapter offers the idea of a “long migration” to better characterize the constant movement by black people in their quest for freedom. The authors illustrate the radical potential of imagining and creating maps that better reflect the lives and experiences of people of color.

Drawing on Malcolm X's provocative 1964 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet," this chapter follows the insight that everywhere below Canada is the South for black Americans. This chapter also provides an overview of the book and the book's central arguments, laying the foundation for subsequent chapters.

This chapter begins using an intimate moment from a 1966 concert by musician Lou Rawls. Detailing the shared experiences and connections across black communities, this chapter uses Rawls’s insight to outline the six major regions of the South. This chapter completes the geographic and political sensibilities that help form the Black Map and the various regions therein. It concludes with an overview of the three-part treatment of “chocolate cities”.

This concluding chapter revisits the book's major themes and arguments. Using a variety of examples drawn from local, state, and international political episodes, the chapter extends the book’s focus, turning especially toward the global implications of its findings and arguments. Using the frame of chocolate cities, the chapter invokes the global possibilities of seeing the world through the eyes of black people everywhere.

Centering the lives, experiences, and murders of transwomen activists Marsha P. Johnson and Duanna Johnson, this chapter explores the migration stories of black women across the Black Map. Emphasizing the importance of intersectionality, the authors highlight the role of race, gender violence, and homophobia in black life and politics. Focused on the connections across space and time, this chapter demonstrates the key role transwomen and women of color play in the politics and migrations of black people throughout the chocolate cities.

This chapter uses two key examples to complete the discussion of the village feature of chocolate cities. First, the life and time of great migrant Arthur Lee Robinson demonstrates the importance of place, rivers, and familial black enclaves throughout the United States. Second, the sketch "Negro Town" from the Key & Peele show illustrates the role of black imagination and density and communal space matter in black citymaking and placemaking.