The people of the Piney Grove settlement, both white and black, had been free for nearly a generation. The whites had been freed from the curse of being slave-holders, and the blacks had been freed from the curse of being held in bondage. But never in the history of this little town, in the very heart of the so-called “Black Belt” of Georgia, had the people known anything about the proper observance of Thanksgiving Day until 189–. And in that year the revolution was brought about by a young colored woman named Grace Wilkins.
Grace Wilkins was the only daughter of Solomon and Amanda Wilkins. Solomon and his wife were farmers—plain, simple, ordinary country folk. Amanda was literally her husband’s helpmeet. She went along with him every morning to the field, and, in season, chopped as much wood, picked as much cotton, hoed as much corn, pulled as much fodder, and plowed as much as her husband did. Up to her fourteenth year Grace had been reared on a farm, and had learned to do all the things that any farmer’s child has to do—such as milking cows, feeding hogs and chickens, hoeing cotton and corn, picking cotton, pulling fodder and the like. In her fourteenth year, acting upon the advice of an uneducated colored preacher, her parents sent Grace away from home to attend one of the great normal and industrial institutes for the training of the black boys and girls of the South.
[Illustration: GRACE BEFORE GOING TO SCHOOL.]
At first her mother and father were filled with forebodings. It was the first time that they had ever allowed their daughter to be away from them, and they missed her so much and longed for her so constantly that they thought that they had made a mistake in sending her off to “boardin’ school.” Ignorant and superstitious neighbors, though they knew as little about such matters as did Solomon and Amanda, were loud in saying that “Sol” and “Mandy” would live to regret the step they had taken in sending Grace away from home. The only rays of sunshine that came in to brighten these periods of mental unrest and gloom on the part of Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins were found in the letters which they received regularly from their daughter. Grace invariably informed her parents, whenever she wrote, that she was “well an’ doin’ well.” Thus reassured from time to time, Solomon and Amanda managed somehow to undergo the terrible strain of having their daughter absent from them for eight months. But meantime they were firmly of the opinion that, once they got their hands on her again, they would never allow Grace to return to school.