He Included Me: The Autobiography of Sarah Rice

1. Early Days in Clio and Birmingham (1909–1917)

CHAPTER ONE Early Days in Clio and Birmingham (1909-1917) M y name is Sarah Rice. I was born in Clio, Alabama, on January 4, 1909. My father, Willis James Webb, was a Methodist minister in the African Methodist Episcopal church, and my mother, Lizzie Janet Lewis Webb,wasateacher. When I wasa little girl, Mama would tell us stories of her courtship, how she met Papa, and different things about her sisters and brothers and about working for the doctor and his family who sent her to school, and about my granddaddy, Albert Lewis, who was born during slavery time. Mama said that my great-grandmother was half white. During that time, the mulattoes were treated better than the regular blacks. They were used for the housework and not put out in the fields as much. So my great-grandmother and her children worked in the big house. I remember Mama telling us about how our great-grandmother had gorgeous hair. During that time the womenwere wearing their hair in big round curls, ringlets, sosheringletted hers. But her mistress didn't like it and took her and cut it all off.Then her hair just curled and looked pretty cut short that way. Some ofthe aristocratic things came down the line with people like my great-grandmother. The fine things of life came to us from them, because they were living in the houses and saw them and acquired manners and good English and an interest in learning, which was good for any generation of people. When freedom time came, my granddaddy was a young man. He used to drive the buggy for his mistresses, and he would see them drinking water out of a glass. He always had to drink out of a gourd, i 2 He Included Me even at home, and he just wanted some day to be able to drink water out of a glass. It looked so crystalline and so fascinating to him, to see those ladies drinking out of a glass. Later on, he married and had a family in Fort Mitchell, Alabama. His wife's name was Sarah, or Sallie, and their children were Lizzie (born in 1870), Sis, Cattie, Judge, and Theodore Roosevelt. My granddaddy Lewis was killed in a cotton gin in about 1906. Sarah Lewis, my grandmama, was a midwife and nursed many of her friends, white and black. She worked with a white doctor out there in the country. He would go among the white people and would always have Sallie come in and help him and see after the people for two weeks or so, kind ofnurse them, and then go on to another one. She passed in 1921. My daddy was born near Cedar Hill, Georgia, May 25, about 1870. He was the baby from his daddy's first marriage, and when his daddy married again after his mama died, his stepmother was mean all the time to him. She had children of her own and was jealous of the previous wife's children. When my daddy was twelve years old, he left home because his stepmother had his daddy to almost kill him for drinking some sweet milk. You weren't supposed to touch that milk until they had taken the butter off and it had turned to clabber and they had made buttermilk. Youdrank the buttermilk; you didn't drink that sweet milk. Daddy ran away from home, and he would walk during the nighttime and hide in the bushes during the daytime to keep from being caught by his father. He went to a white lady who was a widowwoman and had a farm, and he started working by the month for her. She called him Jimmy, and he stayed in the barn. That lady taught him how to read and write, and he could write beautifully, and was a good reader, and he studied hard. He stayed there and worked until he was about nineteen years old, when he was called into the ministry. He used to pick a banjo, and he'd play for the white people when they danced. One night he was picking forthem, and a revival meeting was happening up the road. He slipped away to the revival and joined the church and started preaching. He preached for about two years 3 Early Days in Clio andBirmingham until he got discouraged and stopped. Then he got deathly...