Mrs. Georgia Benjamin S.
Mrs. Georgia works at the Uncle Remus Museum in Eatonton, GA. She looks after the artifacts in the museum and entertains guests with stories of her own, many of which were lessons passed down from her Grandmama.
“My Grandmama used to tell me, ‘Don’t hate a white person today because of slavery; they didn’t have nothing to do with it.’ And that makes much more sense to me than anything I’ve seen today. It seems like all of us that came along during that time was taught the same thing.”
“My Grandmama, with a third grade education, could read whatever you put before her; could write whatever you wanted her to. Now she might not pronounce the words like they should be, but you knew what she was talking about. She might not spell the words like they should be, but you knew what she was talking about. Because, she told me, every white lady’s kitchen she worked in she would tell them when she started to work, ‘I don’t read too good, will you help me?’ And they did! So you have to have an incentive. You got to want to do something.”