would be her first time on Mississippi soil since her sister Talma had died in Tupelo in 1983. Ida Mae had gone down when she got word that her youngest sister had taken ill. She sat at the side of her sister’s bed for her last hours on this earth. Ida Mae remembered she had been watching Talma, and Talma had been trying to speak. “Don’t you see all them people in white singing?” Talma had said, delirious. “They just singing away.” Ida Mae looked in the direction Talma was facing and tried to see the people in white but couldn’t. Days later, at Talma’s funeral, the choir sang in all white.
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