Choosing Freedom

What I likes best, to be slave or free? Well, it’s this way. In slavery I owns nothing and never owns nothing. In freedom I’s own the home and raise the family. All that cause me worriment, and in slavery I has no worriment, but I takes the freedom.

Quote from Margrett Nillin, formerly enslaved in Palestine, Texas, at the age of 90. Nillin was interviewed by members of the Federal Writers’ Project in Fort Worth, Texas in 1937. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division

This quote from Margrett Nillin, a former enslaved person from Texas, is powerful for many reasons- again, just the pure awareness of hearing the voice of a Black woman who experienced the trauma of enslavement, and then the potency of her freedom, her owning her life, her self.

And the truth that while being free, we have more to worry about, we will always choose our freedom over ensalveemtn, no matter what the “master” offers us- the master of corruption, greed, capitalism, system oppression.

Thank you ancestor Margrett for your words, strength and life.