One white man on the platform ...

One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.
One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything.

Quotes from the same author

No person is your friend who demands your silence or denies your right to grow.
Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.
In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.
And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see - or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.
I feel I am a child that's lost its mother. I feel like a calf whose mother has gone off to slaughter.