While I'm aware that the movie is based on a true story, it seemed surprising and probably fictitious to me that people of color, even in New York, were portrayed as being completely equal to whites. Would white men have really shook Northrup's hand and call him "sir"? Did white people and black people regularly dine together and shop in the same places with no division or difference in service at all? Since segregation and lack of rights obviously spanned far, far beyond that time period, I'm wondering what it was really like.