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I grew up in the North but I knew that people had slaves up North. But you can't compare North and South...

Well of course you can't!!

. . . slavery recedes, but the prejudice to which it has given birth is immovable. Whoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived that in those parts of the Union in which the Negroes are no longer slaves they have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known.
It is true that in the North of the Union marriages may be legally contracted between Negroes and whites; but public opinion would stigmatize as infamous a man who should connect himself with a Negress, and it would be difficult to cite a single instance of such a union. The electoral franchise has been conferred upon the Negroes in almost all the states in which slavery has been abolished, but if they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger. If oppressed, they may bring an action at law, but they will find none but whites among their judges; and although they may legally serve as jurors, prejudice repels them from that office. The same schools do not receive the children of the black and of the European. In the theaters gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters; in the hospitals they lie apart; and although they are allowed to invoke the same God as the whites, it must be at a different altar and in their own churches, with their own clergy. The gates of heaven are not closed against them, but their inferiority is continued to the very confines of the other world. When the Negro dies, his bones are cast aside, and the distinction of condition prevails even in the equality of death. Thus the Negro is free, but he can share neither the rights, nor the pleasures, nor the labor, nor the afflictions, nor the tomb of him whose equal he has been declared to be; and he cannot meet him upon fair terms in life or in death.---Alexis DeTocqueville

Like I said, I'm not looking to turn this into a North vs. South. You assume because I live here in NY, that I have a bias against the South. Not true. That's why I said what I said. The underground railroad didn't go sideways. It went North. The fact remains that blacks had more freedom in the North. yes I am sure they had to deal with racism, but not Jim Crow and lynching, especially in big cities like New York City. I was just pointing out things I observe. Now I can talk about living on Long Island amongst white trash and black trash who hate eachother. I can talk about getting made fun of for my mother's West Indian accent or my father looking like Archie Bunker here in the North BUT that's another thread.