“They would talk about anything and everything with me standing right there hearing them, the same way people would talk freely in front of a pet canary. They would talk about me, or about ‘niggers,’ as though I wasn’t there, as if I wouldn’t understand what the word meant. A hundred times a day, they used the word ‘nigger.’ I suppose that in their own minds, they meant no harm, in fact, they probably meant well.”
