you sent me to school for, you're stripping me of it,' I told my aunt.... `The humiliation I had to go through, going into that man's kitchen.... Now going up to that jail.... Anything to humiliate me. All the things you wanted me to escape by going to school. Years ago, Professor Antoine told me that if I stayed here, they were going to break me down to the nigger I was born to be. But he didn't tell me that my aunt would help them do it.'" [p. 79] The only reason that Grant went to the jailhouse was because he was devoted to his aunt, Miss Emma, and Vivian. When they ask him to do things he has no choice but to do it. He more than just arrogant and overly prideful. He is also very loyal to those whom he cares about. If he didnt have that loyalty he wouldnt have gone to the jailhouse at all. He has compassion for everyone in the quarter and understands how it must feel to have not been able to leave from a place, meet new people, do new things, or further your education. He knows how heavy the burden is and how hard it must be for Jefferson to take on the burden of stopping the cycle black people had been repeating for generations. "We black men...stay here in the South and are broken, or we run away and leave them alone to look after the children and themselves. So each time a male child is born, they hope he will be the one to change this vicious circle--which he never does. Because even though he wants to change it, and maybe even tries to change it, it is too heavy a burden because of all the others who have run away and left their burdens behind.... I can give them something that neither a husband, a father, nor a grandfather ever did, so they want to hold on as long as they can. Not realizing that their holding on will break me too." [pp. 166-67]Reverend Ambrose said it best. "Yet they must believe. They must believe, if only to free the mind, if not the body. Only when the mind is free has the body a chance to be free." [p. 251...
