All we could think about was our grandparents and how they worked too hard to let it just fall down.

Grandma was a Grogan and had come from a section of Dobson known as Freetown. Grandma's father had earned his freedom by working nights and weekends.

We just want to keep it this way so that people can see how they lived in this community in those days. This is a way to honor my grandparents.

Grandpa was such a phenomenal person when I think about it. When he was 9, he served a family for six months so that his family could have a cow, and they were good to him. On Saturdays, his mother would walk to see him.... It didn't kill their spirit. They weren't bitter.

Being grandparents sufficiently removes us from the responsibilities so that we can be friends.

I can think of no one that my grandparents knew, that told me stories and that I experienced myself, had any sense of social inferiority growing up in segregated Washington. None whatsoever.