Possum Hollow, that's where Clara Smith grew up. Smith is her married name. She grew up as Clara Lee Keatley at Possum Hollow, her family's 200-acre farm outside Bozoo, West Virginia.

Possum Hollow was so rural and isolated that they didn't get electricity until she was plum grown up and ready to leave home. Self-reliant, her family raised nearly everything they needed—pretty much excepting for flour and animal feed which they got in flowery 50-pound sacks from the nearby town.

As was the fashion, after a sack was emptied, Clara's mother, Viola, would sew it into a dress for her. And on this day in 1942, ten-year-old Clara was wearing a brand new homemade feed sack dress as she helped her mother in the kitchen, and at the same time was learning how to cook.

Excepting for school, in a one-room schoolhouse a five mile walk round trip, Clara rarely left Possum Hollow—so called because of its wildlife—"skunks, possums and mountain lions," she said.

Rarely leaving Possum Hollow, Clara, all her life, had only seen Scottish and English folks. She had never seen a Black person and knew nothing about the Jim Crow atmosphere of the segregated South.

At Possum Hollow, her father, Syrus, her mother, and what would be 15 children raised a herd of 200-300 Black Angus cattle, had a family garden, and in season raised alfalfa and hay crops for the cattle. When the crops were ready for harvesting and bailing, Clara's father, hired a Mr. Carl to help as a field hand.

When she heard that they were having a guest for dinner, Viola had Clara kill a chicken, and they prepared a special Sunday lunch: fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, with buttermilk biscuits.

When lunchtime came around, and Syrus came to the house with Mr. Carl, Clara was surprised to see a dark-skinned man in coveralls coming to the house with her father.

"I had never seen a person of color," Clara said. "The people I knew were all Scottish and English and whiter than snow."

After they washed their hands in the enamel wash bowl, Syrus led Mr. Carl into the kitchen and invited Mr. Carl to sit at the table.

Mr. Carl looked at Syrus and said, "I cannot."

Now Syrus fully acquainted with the Jim Crow segregation in town, said, "This is my house. I make the rules here and you eat at my table or I will not feed you."

With that said, they sat at the table and ate.

~ Clara Smith/Al Zagofsky