I want the teacher visit my boy. I want the teacher make him know he’s not a hog, he’s a man. I want him know that ’fore he go to that chair, Mr. Henri.
You hit the nail on the head there, lady—commitment. Commitment to what—to live and die in this hellhole, when we can leave and live like other people?
I could look at the smoke rising from each chimney or I could look at the rusted tin roof of each house, and I could tell the lives that went on in each one of them.