Beyond schooling, just like her mother before her, Lucille aimed to teach Millicent and Ada certain practical things: how to sew a hem or mend a tear, how to cook barley in the pot, how to hammer a nail and file a board, how to reckon money, how to chop wood. At home, Lucille put the girls to work in the small garden she had planted out back, teaching them how to harvest cassava, pumpkin, arrowroot, eddo, and yam. She taught them about herbs and plants, what they could do with things like milkweed and pigeon pea and crab’s-eye vine. And all the while she sewed clothes that earned them enough
...more
