The daughter of a freeholder, Sara Brooks was born in 1911 on her parents’ subsistence farm in west Alabama. Here in her own words, she makes us understand what it felt like to be young, black, innocent, and steeped in the ways of a black rural world that has largely been lost to us.

The daughter of a freeholder, Sara Brooks was born in 1911 on her parents’ subsistence farm in west Alabama. Here in her own words, she makes us understand what it felt like to be young, black, innocent, and steeped in the ways of a black rural world that has largely been lost to us.