Mamie Johnson recalls living and working in the South until the mid-1950s, when she moved to Waterloo, Iowa, with her husband and family. When she was a child, Johnson’s family lived and worked on white-owned land as sharecroppers. She had five siblings. Johnson worked in the field and for the white household, doing dishes, cleaning, and yard work beginning at the age of seven or eight. Johnson recalls the unspoken rules of racial etiquette that she and others lived by, such as being prohibited from using the front door or the outhouse at a white person’s home and being expected to address even children as “mister” or “miss.” Johnson speaks about the real and threatened violence that she and other African Americans lived under, including her own experience being harassed by white men and her vivid memories of Emmett Till’s murder and the subsequent trial.