It was the world of Southern, rural, black growing up, of folks sitting on porches day and night, of folks calling your mama, 'cau...se you walked by and didn't speak, and of the switch waiting when you got home so that you could be taught some manners. It was a world of single black older women schoolteachers, dedicated, tough; they had taught your mama, her sisters, and her friends. They knew your people in ways that you never would and shared their insight, keeping us in touch with generations. It was a world where we had a history.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Traditionally Southern statesmen have been orators. A society emphasizing social rituals and manners requires a kind of reverence ...for words to adequately express sentiment and feeling. The dregs of this rhetoric remain the stock in trade of the grass roots politicians. The Southerner generally does not shy away--to the extent the Northerner does--from a use of language that is something more than bare statement. The Northerner, with his conditioned respect for practicality and getting-to-the-point is more likely to possess a far greater reading than speaking vocabulary and to associate anything more than simple expression with ostentation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Squats on a toad-stool under a tree A bodiless childfull of life in the gloom,... Crying with frog voice, "What shall I be? Poor unborn ghost, for my mother killed me Scarcely alive in her wicked womb.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Edible. Good to eat and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man t...o a worm.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... as a result of generations of betrayal, it's nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what ...he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"Please your honors," said he, "I'm able, By means of a secret charm, to draw... All creatures living beneath the sun, That creep, or swim, or fly, or run, After me so as you never saw! And I chiefly use my charm On creatures that do people harm, The mole, and toad, and newt, and viper; And people call me the Pied Piper."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »