For the fourth year, we three came out to read excerpts from a newly emancipated slave’s narrative. We took the usual group photo in our costumes and then…
had the sheer delight of having our pictures taken by a professional! I didn’t have the bandwidth to memorize the few lines of Mattie Gilmore’s narrative, but felt very comfortable emoting the lines to the museum visitors.
When I’d volunteered to participate this year, I had no idea that I’d be in the midst of studying for my property and casualty license. Nonetheless, sacrificing a little study time was totally worth it to remember the people who came before me, who never once dreamed of being an insurance agent.
Before leaving, we had another group picture with all of the historical character interpreters although the seated woman entertained everyone with one of her family stories that had been passed down for generations about the KKK coming to one of her relative’s house to kill him and a mysterious pack of wild dogs confronted the Klan. They’d never seen those dogs before or since that night.
After changing out of our costumes, we dashed over to the newest dinner/movie theatre to see “Wonder Woman.” I asked the guy at the ticket counter to take our picture since we were two Black women who’d actually arrived early.
That was so silly, we asked the bartender to take our picture as well. Then we watched “Wonder Woman.” That movie was so much fun and she’d done so many capoeira kicks, I nearly wanted to start training capoeira again. But not sparring. I never have to spar again! At least not physically.