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“Quiet as it's kept, there is a certain type of "upper class" white folks who don't use "colored help" at all. In fact, household labor is a segregated occupation. A Lancashire-born (English) butler, asked if he had encountered many black men and women in his 20 years of service, said reflectively, "I can't think of one I worked with. On one job we had Italian cook, an Irish kitchen man, a French lady's maid, an English butler, and an English parlormaid." The upper echelon's household staff is 99-99/100% white.”
― Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Thursdays and Every Other Sunday Off: A Domestic Rap by Verta Mae

“The southern belle was something to write home about...One Yankee stationed in Mississippi wrote home: "[They are] sharp-nosed, tobacco-chewing, snuff-rubbing, flax-headed, hatchet-faced, yellow-eyed, sallow-skinned, cotton-dressed, flat-breasted, bare-headed, long-waisted, hump-shouldered, stoop-necked, big-footed, straddle-toed, sharp-shinned, thin-lipped, pale-faced, lantern-jawed, silly-looking damsels.”
― Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Thursdays and Every Other Sunday Off: A Domestic Rap by Verta Mae

“When Queen Elizabeth heard of Hawkins' slaving venture, she said "It was detestable and would call down vengeance from heaven upon the undertakers." Hawkins went to the see the queen and showed Her Majesty his profit sheet. Not only did she forgive him but she became a shareholder in his second slaving voyage.”
― Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Thursdays and Every Other Sunday Off: A Domestic Rap by Verta Mae

“She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon