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21 " What others might dismiss as the vagaries of fate, my father interpreted as dancing lessons from the Divine. "
― Timothy B. Tyson , Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story
22 " We cannot address the place we find ourselves because we will not acknowledge the road that brought us here. Our failure to confront the historical truth about how African Americans finally won their freedom presents a major obstacle to genuine racial reconciliation. "
23 " That we not become prejudiced against those are prejudiced, or whose prejudices. May no be our own. "
24 " A local white bootlegger, idling under the store awning, accosted Major Stem. “Why’d you call that damned nigger woman ‘Mrs. Shaw’?” he demanded. In those days, white Southerners did not use courtesy titles for their black neighbors. While it was permissible to call a favored black man “Uncle” or “Professor”—a mixture of affection and mockery—he must never hear the words “mister” or “sir.” Black women were “girls” until they were old enough to be called “auntie,” but they could never hear a white person, regardless of age, address them as “Mrs.” or “Miss” or “Ma’am.” But Major Stem made his own rules. "
25 " He held his ground like a sweet gum stump trying hard to live in a spirit of love and action, not anger and reaction "
26 " South where I grew up. In large measure, this reflected a racial and gender caste system that denied most other opportunities to African American women. That system was designed to ensure a ready supply of cheap black labor, especially for the Southern ruling classes that emerged out of slavery’s old planter class. But the privilege of exploiting black labor extended even to fairly lowly whites; textile mill hands and poor farmers, for example, frequently employed their black "
27 " In politics, everyone regards themselves as a moderate, because they know some other sumbitch who's twice as crazy as they are. "
28 " But as I’d learned my new trade at a deeper level, I’d discovered that I had not escaped the call to ministry as cleanly as I might have thought. I had not only followed my mother into the classroom but my father into the pulpit, never mind that I preached on weekdays instead of Sundays. There I was, pacing the lecture hall with chalk dust on my pants, day after day. "