Our future could be just this beautiful, if whites would just let it,...

"With a few months of training, [Amelia] Lines had once confidently predicted, 'I can make Beckie do my work just as I want it done.' Beckie, instead, failed to do things her mistress's way. Moreover, she ran away. Yet, 'bad as she is,' Lines was willing to try Beckie once more if she were captured even though, she admitted, Beckie had never shown any appreciation for the lessons Lines taught her, or any intimation of a desire to please her mistress. But Lines had gone to 'a great deal of trouble in teaching her' and to give up on her simply meant 'going through the same trouble with a new servant.'
"Cousin Jane use to wait til master have company in missus big parlor and when dey be in dar jes talking and lafing she goes in dar, pulls up her coat tail over her head, shows all she's got and say , 'Marse, is you gwine whip me? Here I is."