Only years later would adult Octavia fully realize that she had lashed out at her mother, a woman who endured low pay and insults to put food on the table, rather than at the true source of her resentment. The white lady had made her feel small, and she was upset with her mother for letting that happen. So yes, Octavia understood her friend’s anger because she had already done the work of reconciling her own. The question was how to get her generation, especially middle-class Blacks like her classmate, and the ones that followed to have their own epiphanies.9 The answer to that question would
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