Mrs. Baylor
/When I was nine years old we had a housekeeper—Mrs. Baylor. One day she pulled me aside and told me that if I ever went to Africa, the Africans would kill me. “They don’t like no light skinned Negroes in Africa,” she told me.
I’m not sure how I took that. I don’t remember being especially afraid. Africa was over there, after all,—and I wasn’t. I did, however, feel the brunt of a strange kind of discrimination. The Africans were prejudiced against light skinned Negroes. That seemed harsh and unfair.