When I was 7 or 8 years old, I met my Aunt Sophie-- really, great-aunt....who was 92. She gave me an embroidered quilt she had finished in 1837. She said she made one for each of us nieces.

She told me my great-uncle Ed, as a child, had hidden from Quantrell's Raiders in the corn fields.

MY family always was free. My family is white. My family came into this country to go to  the Dakotas, Minnisota. The Civil War did not involve them.

I keep  thinking about that. On the radio, I heard a woman say slavery ended 100 years ago, and black people should just get over it. If, in 1952, my relatives were still remembering  events from the Civil War, were influenced by it, how could black  persons not also be affected.