Williams describes some of the daily insults endured by African Americans in segregated Monroe, North Carolina, and her struggle to shed their legacy. She remembers a white family that named its dog with a racist slur, and her trips to the white part of town to buy milk, because the milk man declined to enter the black community. Many African Americans endured these slights for their own safety, but there were some, like one man she remembers, who sought to cultivate a sense of pride.