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45b0531
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We are all worthy of one another.
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worthiness
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Edward P. Jones |
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a877136
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A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man . . . stops learning at fourteen or so.
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Edward P. Jones |
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0dae71d
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A man does not learn very well, Mr. Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr. Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose.
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Edward P. Jones |
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596d643
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Whenever people in that part of the world asked Patterson about the wonders of America, the possibilities and the hope of America, Patterson would say that it was a good and fine place but all the Americans were running it into the ground and that it would be a far better place if it had no Americans.
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Edward P. Jones |
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ce6ee3d
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Calvin had long been uneasy in his own person and so lived to put everyone else at ease.
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Edward P. Jones |
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fa4b2de
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You too heavy a man for me to carry...I done carried heavy men and I know how they can break your back. I ain't got but this one back and I don't want it broke again...
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Edward P. Jones |
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073e43f
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When Augustus Townsend died in Georgia near the Florida line, he rose up above the barn where he had died, up above the trees and the crumbling smokehouse and the little family house nearby, and he walked away quick-like, toward Virginia. He discovered that when people were above it all they walked faster, as much as a hundred times faster than when they were confined to the earth. And so he reached Virginia in little or no time. He came to..
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Edward P. Jones |
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c25395f
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He] went on to tell her that certain work songs made the work a little easier, but that there were others, depending upon the time of day, that dragged a body down, so 'you just gotta be careful with your songs and your hummin' and whatnot.
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Edward P. Jones |
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817b58e
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His oldest child from his second marriage, Matthew, stayed up all the night before he was buried, putting his father's history on a wooden tombstone. He began with his father's name on the first line, and on the next, he put the years ofhis father's coming and going. Then all the things he knew his father had been. Husband. Father. Farmer. Grandfather. Patroller. Tobacco Man. Tree Maker. The letters ofthe words got smaller and smaller as th..
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Edward P. Jones |
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5e205d9
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He knew he was going to die but he thought this little thing might provide him with a nothing stool way off in the corner of heaven reserved for fools, people too stupid to come out of the rain. People got to that corner by heaven's back door.
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Edward P. Jones |
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a5d6f4b
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Priscilla watched her husband as he slowly drifted into sleep, and once he was asleep, she took hold of his hand and put it to her face and smelled all of the outside world that he had brought in with him and then she tried to find sleep herself.
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Edward P. Jones |
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1d0217f
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The wonderful thing about writers like [James] Baldwin is the way we read them and come across passages that are so arresting we become breathless and have to raise our eyes from the page to keep from being spirited away.
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words
writing
wonder
james-baldwin
writers
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Edward P. Jones |
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a749e3b
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God is in his heaven and he don't care most of the time. The trick of life is to know when God does care and do all you need to do behind his back.
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Edward P. Jones |
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750d40e
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Most crimes and misdemeanors by slaves were dealt with by their masters; they could even hang a slave if he killed another slave, but that would have been like throwing money down a well after the slave had already thrown the first load of money down, as William Robbins once told Skiffington.
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Edward P. Jones |
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a53f04b
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But where, in all she taught her son, was it about thou shall own no one, havin been owned once your own self. Don't go back to Egypt after God done took you outa there.
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Edward P. Jones |
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b967298
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Augustus wasn't driving the wagon very fast because he had his family together again and all time was now spread out before him over the valley and the mountains forever and ever.
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Edward P. Jones |
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448e149
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A few women had cried, remembering the way Henry smiled or how he would join them in singing or thinking that the death ofanyone, good or bad, master or not, cut down one more tree in the life forest that shielded them from their own death; but most said or did nothing.
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Edward P. Jones |
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f878440
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She went through her memory for the time, for the day, she and and her husband told him all about what he should and should not do. No goin out into them woods without Papa or me knowin about it. No steppin foot out this house without them free papers, not even to go to the well or the privy. Say your prayers every night...Pick the blueberries close to the ground, son. Them the sweetest, I find. If a white man say the trees can talk, can da..
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Edward P. Jones |
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1e9c8dc
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Best hurry, he thought. Best get outa this weather. He wanted to die but he really didn't want to catch a cold to do it.
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Edward P. Jones |
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a6510c0
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But he was a free and clear man, and the law said so. Augustus never hurt me, never said bad to me. What Harvey done was wrong. But tellin you don't put me on the nigger side. I'm still on the white man side, John. I'm still standin with the white. God help me if you believe somethin else about me.
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Edward P. Jones |
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a0d6621
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Without all that young stuff, Stamford, you will die a slave. And it will not be a pretty die.
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Edward P. Jones |
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b936cfb
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His droning on and on was a bit soothing, far more than Calvin's hand on her arm or the children's smiling up at her. His talking told her in some odd way that one day the pain would at least be cut in half.
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Edward P. Jones |
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4914266
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It mattered not how long he had wandered in the wilderness, how long they had kept him in chains, how long he had helped them and kept himself in his own chains; none of that mattered now. He patted the baby's back, turned around and went back to the Richmond Home for Colored Orphans. No, it did not matter. It mattered only that those kind of chains were gone and that he had crawled out into the clearing and was able to stand up on his hind..
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Edward P. Jones |
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f24ce67
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People, I have learned, have a way of taking root in one's still-developing mind without our knowing it, especially people, like [James] Baldwin, who live in the world of words.
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words
influence
james-baldwin
writers
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Edward P. Jones |
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ab78ec9
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In 1855 in Manchester County, Virginia, there were thirty-four free black families, with a mother and father and one child or more, and eight of those free families owned slaves, and all eight knew each other's business.
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Edward P. Jones |
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92ce041
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Calvin had said, his hands hard at his sides.
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Edward P. Jones |
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2661f97
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Mary O'Donnell had been nursing that baby, and the day after Agnes was committed to the sea, her milk stopped flowing. She thought it only a natural result of grieving for Agnes. She would go on to have three more children with her second husband, the seller of Augustus Townsend's walking sticks, but with each child the milk did not return. "Where is my milk?" Mary asked God with each of the three children. "Where is my milk?" God did not g..
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Edward P. Jones |
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34c554d
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But the law expects you to know what is master and what is slave . . . if you roll around and be a playmate to your property, and your property turns around and bites you, the law will come to you still, but it will not come with the full heart and all the deliberate speed you will need. You will have failed in your part of the bargain. You will have pointed to the line that separates you from your property and told your property that the l..
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Edward P. Jones. Jones |
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b8e6c9f
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But my mother wanted her children to be educated by nuns and priests all dressed in black, the way it had been done down through the generations with her people. Taught by people who had a firm grasp of how big and awful the world could be.
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religion
life
parochial-schools
religious-education
nuns
schools
priests
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Edward P. Jones |
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730bcf0
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What we need is a new God. Somebody who knows what the fuck he's doing.
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religion
god
higher-power
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Edward P. Jones |
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f02b246
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We leave, we run away and don't realize how much we'll need to go back home one day. The South is like that. It's the worst mama in the world and it's the best mama in the world.
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south
roots
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Edward P. Jones |
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454fc1d
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As for the absence of recovery, as for death, there are machines that are not meant for the road.
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illness
weakness
dying
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Edward P. Jones |
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ca24abf
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They treat colored people like kings and queens in Washington, cause thas where the president lives. Would they treat colored people anything but good in a city where the president hangs his hat and pets his dog and snores besides Mrs. President every night? Now would they?
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presidents
blacks
washington-dc
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Edward P. Jones |
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2106222
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Render your body to them" his father had taught, "but know your soul belongs to God."
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Edward P. Jones |
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379590c
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Celeste was practically talking to herself now because Stamford and the baby were in a world of their own. The baby's hands had reached the man's face and he was tapping every feature of it, doing everything that was necessary for the man to say the words the baby had come to expect in their brief history together. Stamford's mouth opened more and more. 'You here early this mornin,' Stamford Crow Blueberry would say to Ellwood Freemen that ..
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Edward P. Jones |
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b0fa4ad
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In the spring of 1844, a good many white people in Manchester County remained uneasy about news from other places about slave "restlessness" that had gone on a few years before. In the North, people called it slave uprisings, but in much of Virginia the word uprisings had an abolitionist undertone and was felt to be too strong for what many slaveowners preferred to characterize as "a family squabble," instigated by unknowns not part of the ..
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Edward P. Jones |
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35a98b6
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Moses had thought that it was already a strange world that made him a slave to a white man, but God had indeed set it twirling and twisting every which way when he put black people to owning their own kind. Was God even up there attending to business anymore?
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Edward P. Jones |
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9df2f88
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Henry had been a good master, his widow decided, as good as they come. Yes, he sometimes had to ration the food he gave them. But that was not his fault--had God sent down more food, Henry would certainly have given it to them. Henry was only the middleman in that particular transaction. Yes, he had to have some slaves beaten, but those were the ones who would not do what was right and proper. Spare the rod . . . , the Bible warned. Her hus..
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Edward P. Jones |
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b2a5e9a
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The hitter can never be the judge. Only the receiver of the blow can tell you how hard it was, whether it would kill a man or make a baby just yawn.
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Edward P. Jones |