Introduction

I wish to introduce my grandmother to the world. Some of my happiest and most stable years were spent with her, as a child, in a small rural community twenty miles north of Birmingham, Alabama, called the Colony. My brothers and I used to visit her during the summer months and several times through the school year. Life with Mama Rosie on the farm was simple and routine and was quite a contrast to the life we had in Cleveland with our parents. Those years with her were the happiest of my life.