“Their mother died and so, when these children (Monica and Tonneke) were left motherless then someone fostered them, and they were sort of offered to my mother and my grandmother…So my grandmother said ‘well sure we’ll take them’ because that means…

“I had different duties as (a) ‘healthy’ prisoner. I had the kindergarten in the morning while the mothers were working in the fields. If the children were tired from sitting, we would make a walk, looking for pretty stones, count the leaves on the…

“We spent our first few weeks in Banjoe Biroe in Block C. Banjo Biroe was a real prison. My mother and I slept on a little Persian carpet which kept us free from “bugs,” except when the bugs dropped from the ceiling. We had smugglers in our camp-I…

"I grew up in the South but I couldn’t wait to get as far away from that Southern lifestyle as I could get. So, I moved to California, lived there twenty years, flew to Honolulu for ten years. Got as far away as I could get. Then Bob’s business…

"We descend from one of the largest intact plantations in Georgia: The William Harris Homestead on Highway 11 in Monroe, Georgia. In 1825, my mother’s great grandpa William Harris started the homestead on 500 acres acquired in a treaty with the…

“If you were not in the mines, you would take and unload coal off the ships onto railroad cars. We would work every morning about 4:00 am and you did not know where you were going to be, whether in the mine or on the ship or where. Then the next day…

"My slave ancestors, despite the horrors they were subjected to, had value and were listed among the assets of a slaveholder. Had the Nazi position prevailed in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War (my slave great-grandfather and namesake, William…