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Sunday, October 03, 2004

Race Relations 

I am interested in all family lore, but lately even more so about stories of African-Americans like Willie Washington who worked for our family. They provide priceless insight into life in those times. Please share any stories that you remember.

Grandmother told me of about one of Mama Rae’s cooks who wouldn’t come to work one day and refused to say why. She was a good cook and so Mama Rae finally got it out of one of the other servants that an enemy of the cook had planted some sort of cursed fetish in the ground beneath the kitchen’s doorway. The cook believed that if she crossed over the door’s threshold she would die, which is why she wasn’t coming to work. Even if she herself believed it was ignorant superstition, Mama Rae knew how deadly serious the situation was to the cook and had some men dig up the ground beneath the door and say a prayer over it. The cook felt this was adequate to lift the curse and returned to work.

Daddy Edmund’s mother drove with her chauffeur Willie (not Willie Washington, another Willie) to Fisher and Hobart’s wedding on Fisher’s family plantation in Mississippi. After she had gone to bed she heard a soft knock at her door. She opened it and there was Willie, who was trembling in abject terror, in fear for his life. He had been sent out to sleep in the servant’s quarters with the other African Americans, who were all field workers and were a rougher, meaner breed than he had ever encountered in Marshall. Willie was a slight, refined man and he was certain they were going to kill him. She let him sleep outside her door on a palette.

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