“His conflicts with my mother [which often flared into physical violence] were because of her education. She knew grammar and she was emphatic about how she taught us. She didn’t accept the term ‘colored’; she said we are black people; she never allowed us to accept the term ‘Negro.’ My mother was serious, never jovial. She’d always get us to the facts of what we were talking about. She would sing to us: ‘one and one are two . . . two and two are four. . . .’ Then there were French songs she would teach us. My mother was the one who brought knowledge out of us.” 35
