I’d like to go back and quote one more experience from my childhood. No doubt this experience stands out above all others that happened to me during that period; it did such violence to my feelings that I merely have to remember it for all of the hot surges of shame to come back even at this date in full force, as fresh as they were at that time. While living in Jackson, Mississippi, the home in which I lived with my grandmother burned down and I and my mother and brother were shipped off to live with neighbors until the house could be repaired. My mother and brother and I were given a little room; my uncle and his children were given another room in which to sleep. Our room was next to the kitchen; my uncle’s room was up near the front of the house. None of us had any money and we were hungry most of the time. I had a little job which brought in just enough money to keep us from starving. Whenever I’d go to the table, I’d go there hungry and it seemed to me that I’d leave hungrier than when I went. I’d rise from the table, looking longingly at what was left over; but I’d know that I should not ask for it, because it was not my share. I’d stoically rise and turn my head and leave the kitchen and try to forget about it.

I remember one evening I came home and was called into the kitchen and was fed. A lot of my little cousins were eating at the table and they were as hungry as I was. As usual I ate what was allotted me and then went into the front of the house. About nine o’clock that night, my mother and my uncle called me to the kitchen.

“Why did you do it?” my mother asked.

My eyes widened involuntarily.

“Why did I do what?” I asked.

“If you wanted to steal those biscuits, you didn’t have to rip the screen wire off the cabinet,” my mother said.

“Rip what screen?” I asked.

Holding me firmly by both arms, my mother and uncle took me to the cabinet.

“Look at that,” my uncle said.

“Why did you do it?” my mother said.

Sure enough, the screen was ripped and the plate of biscuits had vanished.

“But I didn’t do it,” I protested, outraged.

“Everybody else says that they didn’t do it, so you must have done it,” my uncle said.