Mistress Ross was the most pious woman in all the South. Well, look how well she and her husband treated their slaves! What good Christians the ladies said at meetings. She was a modest woman: her husband owned a respectable-sized plantation with 50 slaves, but she still did not hesitate to make generous donations to the Church. She felt that she must serve the Lord by uplifting the poor and unenlightened souls of his slaves and teaching them the sacred path. Master Ross shook his head at his wife, because everyone knew that you give a slave an inch and he suddenly acts like he owns the farm. I was fair-skinned, so she took pity on me and took me inside the house when I was three. . It was good, in general; I had good food, clothing, education and housing. However, I was taught to be seen and not heard. I only ate after everyone had fallen asleep. When we had company, I would stand silently by the dinner table, just serving more portions, while the guests pet Ross's daughter Dorothy. Dorothy wasn't really at fault. She was the same age as me and was quite nice. Anyway, I didn't expect anyone to be particularly nice. I was indebted to the Rosses for taking me in, even though I was a lowly slave. Who knew what would have happened to me if I had been left in the jungles of Africa? But something was different about Dorothy. Her soft, thin face held something that her parents lacked. She stayed with me to eat after everyone went to sleep, even though her parents told her not to. When she was seven, she began learning from a tutor and Mistress decided that I knew enough to read the Bible, thus ending my studies. Anyway, I didn't much appreciate the way she educated me, explaining everything to me fifty times like I was a stupid cow. But I thirst...... middle of paper ...... so is it with me, that I have a heart as dark as sin? Yet while so many whites and blacks continued to march, I know blacks who could help. Maybe some white people would too. Maybe this woman would help me if I was in danger. I only knew three white people and among them I defined millions. If their hypothesis was wrong, who could say mine was correct? I believed that white people were not superior, but I echoed them by saying that black people were superior. For white plantation owners, money earned a human being's life; for me, freedom has taken over a human's life. I firmly believed that I was morally superior, but I wanted to let this woman die. How was I better than the plantation owner who happily let his slave die? In doing so, my heart would be as blackened as theirs. If I was like them, letting one of them die would be dying myself. I jumped into the flames..