I never told you, but our life is a war and I have been a traitor all my born days, a spy in the enemy's country ever since I give up my gun back in the Reconstruction. On his deathbed he called my father to him and said, "Son, after I'm gone I want you to keep up the good fight. He was an odd old guy, my grandfather, and I am told I take after him. They stayed in their place, worked hard, and brought up my father to do the same. About eighty-five years ago they were told that they were free, united with others of our country in everything pertaining to the common good, and, in everything social, separate like the fingers of the hand. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed. I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I was in the cards, other things having been equal (or unequal) eighty-five years ago. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! And yet I am no freak of nature, nor of history. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. It goes a long way back, some twenty years.
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