Guess that I should apologize, too, see'in as how I joined in on the early 1900 Negro dialect myself. Should we channel Mark Twain so that he, too, can offer an apology? Ah reckon dat whut he done is coin si dered litterture, tho. I used to speak with a southern drawl back in my childhood before my parents took me to the big city to live. That's where I lost my southern charm to a more "correct" style of enunciation. I'm glad that I'm able to appreciate jokes about southerners; I sorta wish that I still had my southern accent, though.

Linda Tx, I, too, grew up around blacks and never considered them to be any different than myself. My mother's family took a black girl, about age 12, into their home to help with all the children that my grandmother had. She always slept in the same bed with my mother and her sisters (in those days several children slept in one large bed) and played with them as one of their siblings. It wasn't until I was in my preteens living in the "sophisticated" city that I realized that white folks had a different attitude about blacks. I went through a huge struggle trying to understand what that was about. We had a black woman who came to our home once a week to clean. One day my little sister, who was five, threw her arms around the lady and gave her a big kiss on the face. Having learned that this wasn't considered appropriate by my neighbors, I told my sister not to kiss her again since she was a black woman. The following week as this lady was leaving our home, she reached down to hug my sister, who responded,"I can't kiss you because my sister says that we don't kiss blacks." I wasn't present when this occurred, but later that sweet gentle woman said to me, "Miriam, your sister said that you told her not to kiss me." Boy, was I mortified. I was unable to confess that I had told her that so I lied and said, "I didn't say that!" She sweetly looked at me and replied, "I really didn't believe that you would say such a thing." I've never forgotten that woman's grace. That was the Holy Spirit speaking through that lady.