How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[Yarnell] was born of free parents in Illinois but a man named Bloodworth kidnapped him in Missouri and brought him down to Arkansas just before the war. Yarnell was a good man, thrifty and industrious, and he later became a famous housepainter in Memphis, Tennessee. (1.7)
Mattie doesn't spend a lot of time holding hands and singing "We Shall Overcome," but we get the sense that, in the 1950s, she would have been facing down the firehoses and riot police with the other civil rights activists. For her time, seeing a black man as a man—not to mention a good man—was practically radical talk.
Quote #2
When the conductor came through he said, "Get that trunk out of the aisle, n*****."
I replied to him in this way, "We will move the trunk but there is no reason to be so hateful about it.
[…] He saw that I had brought to all the darkies attention how little he was. (2.3-5)
Slavery has legally been over for about ten years, but there's still a long way to go—obviously, since Mattie frowns on the n-word but substitutes "darkies" as an acceptable alternative. But, again, this is totally progressive for the time.
Quote #3
The Irishman said, "If ye would loike to kiss him it will be all roight."
I said, "No, put the lid on." (2.19-20)
LOL, silly accents. Here, Mattie is giving us the Irish undertaker's accent to (1) make us laugh, and (2) suggest that Fort Smith is a multicultural metropolis. In the nineteenth century, Irish immigrants got just as much bad press as undocumented immigrants from Mexico today—if not more.