Most of this suggests The Great Migration – the movement of Black Americans north in the decades after Reconstruction. The era of slavery doesn't fit – there were no buses back then – but The Great Migration took place in the twentieth century, when some of the same problems from slavery, as well as new ones like Jim Crow laws and lynching, made life so undesirable in the South that many Black Americans moved north for better – not easy but better – lives in the North. That wraps up most of the details of the song… going north, not the only family to make the trip,
A detail that doesn't fit perfectly… Baltimore. Baltimore is more middle than North or South; it was a city with slavery before the Civil War, but was a net destination during The Great Migration, and it has snow of its own, if not as often as places like Chicago and Boston. That's not a hard contradiction with the facts of the song: A family could still be moving from Baltimore farther north. As Byrne himself had lived in both Canada and Maryland, he could be thinking of Baltimore as the southern point of reference.
However, The Great Migration is the one historical event that makes the other elements fit. And with Give Me Back My Name a shout-out to Malcolm X, it shows that Byrne's songwriting definitely has chosen one person whose life followed that pattern (Malcolm's family arc went from Georgia to Massachusetts by way of Nebraska).
Most of this suggests The Great Migration – the movement of Black Americans north in the decades after Reconstruction. The era of slavery doesn't fit – there were no buses back then – but The Great Migration took place in the twentieth century, when some of the same problems from slavery, as well as new ones like Jim Crow laws and lynching, made life so undesirable in the South that many Black Americans moved north for better – not easy but better – lives in the North. That wraps up most of the details of the song… going north, not the only family to make the trip,
A detail that doesn't fit perfectly… Baltimore. Baltimore is more middle than North or South; it was a city with slavery before the Civil War, but was a net destination during The Great Migration, and it has snow of its own, if not as often as places like Chicago and Boston. That's not a hard contradiction with the facts of the song: A family could still be moving from Baltimore farther north. As Byrne himself had lived in both Canada and Maryland, he could be thinking of Baltimore as the southern point of reference.
However, The Great Migration is the one historical event that makes the other elements fit. And with Give Me Back My Name a shout-out to Malcolm X, it shows that Byrne's songwriting definitely has chosen one person whose life followed that pattern (Malcolm's family arc went from Georgia to Massachusetts by way of Nebraska).