FREEDOM’S CHOICE





“I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.” – Abraham Lincoln

As humans, we soon come to a difficult choice of two paths: the righteous and the honorable. Neither is easy, nor comfortable, but what exactly is the difference between the two? Some say there’s absolutely no difference, and others say they are drastically different. I guess no one really knows until they decide to take one.
My dears, the story that’s about to be told isn’t a usual civil war story. In fact, it
is a very rare one. You see, it isn’t just a story of war, and slaves. Rather, it’s a story of love, and freedom. Listen, as the story I tell has an important lesson to be learned by all.


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It was the year 1964. The month was September. I had just finished picking cotton and I was on my way back to my slave house.

“Kitchie,” someone whispered as I made my way threw the field.

Hiding in the bushes, two heads popped up.
“Have ya’ll lost ya senses? Ya wanna be whipped like Old Pappy was yesterday? If ya’ll don’t do ya work like ya ’posed to, they’ll have all our heads. Go on, get.”
The boys chuckled and ran out to the field. My two brothers, Benjamin and Cato were always mixing up trouble. Benjamin, who was a little over a year older than me at eight-teen, should have been the responsible one. Cato, at barely seven and a half years old, was his partner in crime.
At dinner time, I dressed the table and began serving dinner. It wasn’t until I served the wine that I recognized an unusual face sitting across the table. It was the slave owner’s son, William.
William, or how I used to call him, Willy, grew up at the plantation and when I was a little girl, we would sneak off together to play. He had been young and didn’t understand the difference between white and black, slave and slave owner, free and contained. He went off to school when he was six-teen and I was left at the plantation to do my work.
He smiled at me and I couldn’t help but smile back. After all these years, I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t been convinced that I was some kind of animal. It was comforting to know that he still looked at me with those glassy, blue eyes in the same way.
After dinner I headed to the slave house to find my brothers. On the trip, I heard rustling in the bushes.
“Dear Lord if you boys don’t stop foolin’ ’round, ya heads will be on the wall.” I huffed.
I heard a chuckle and stepped more closely. A familiar face stepped forward, and I realized he couldn’t be any of my kin.
“Well that would be painful, wouldn’t it?” He said with that smile that was burned in my mind from our childhood.

“Willy,” I said, returning the smile. I wasn’t sure if I should hug him, or if I was even a loud to. There were a lot of years between now and those years where color didn’t matter to him. My concern was foolish though, because I soon found him surrounding me in his arms.
After the embraced I starred at him for a while.
“How ya been?” I asked. He shook his head.
“Now, don’t go all grown up on me yet, Kitchie. We’re not gunna talk about grown up stuff right now. We got this time, let’s make it worth somethin’.”
I was confused, as I usually was, but I nodded. And we played, and played, and played just like we did when were six. And then we laughed, and we joked, and we had fun just like we did when we were six. But they problem was, I realized, that we weren’t six and as soon as that sun rose, I’d go back to being the slave and he’d go back to being the white, free, son of the slave owner. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that he would soon find a nice white wife, and they would have some nice white babies, and he would soon be a slave owner himself. But the thing that frightened me most, was that him soon becoming slave-owner didn’t bother me as much as the fact that he would have himself his white wife and his white family.
“Willy, what if I told ya I never wanted the sun to rise?” I said, leaning my head on his shoulder.
He looked at me, straight in the eyes like no other white man had done before and kissed my forehead.
“And what if I told ya I would keep the sun from rising forever if I only could.” He said with a longing smile.

I starred up to the boy I spent my childhood with, the only white man who saw me as the human being I was and not the animal or property I was once referred to. Oh, how I wanted him to kiss me. To my surprise, just like he had read my mind, he leaned down and our lips touched softly.
We weren’t stupid. We knew a future together was impossible. We might as well have been a figment of each other’s imagination. But no matter what we knew, we spent that night together like it was our last, because we knew it most likely was.

Just before the sun’s tip became visible in the sky, Willy sighed.

“Kitchie, I’m going to volunteer for the army.” He said quietly.

I looked up surprised and confused and then sighed.

“Ya gotta do, what you gotta do, Willy. If you think its ya duty to serve for the confederate, then by God, Willy, ya gotta do it.” I said, trying to hide my sadness.

Willy looked confused for a second and then shook his head.

“No, Kitchie. I’m not serving for the Conferderate Army. I’m servin’ for the Union. I’m goin’ to go fight with the yankees . . . for you, for your freedom. President Lincoln is right. It’s time for a change and if I can help get you what you deserve, then I gotta do it.”
I couldn’t help the smile that grew way too quickly on my face and I hugged him tightly. But just as quickly as that smile grew, it faded as I realized the reality of what he was saying. I pulled back from the embrace.

“Willy, ya can’t go.” I said.

“And why not?” He asked jokingly.

I shook my head to let him know I wasn’t joking. He raised his eyebrow as a sad look came across his face.

“Willy I won’t let ya fight. You’ll loose ya honor here in the Confederacy. All ya family and ya friends, they’ll all dishonor ya.”

Willy shook his head.

“There’s no honor in my family to be kept.” He said angrily.

“Ya father will never let you do it.” I added.

“I don’t need his permission.” He responded.

There was no talking this out of him, and so I gave up. We sat there for a few more minutes until we heard more slaves heading to the field to do work. He kissed me one last time and told me he was leaving that afternoon to enroll. He wasn’t telling his father, or the rest of his family.

When I saw the carriage pull up to the door, I watched behind the bushes as Willy walked out with his father and Benjamin, who brought Willy’s bags to the carriage. Before Willy could step in his ride, however, he stopped and looked my way. I squatted down, hoping his father wouldn’t see me. A few seconds later, footsteps sounded and I looked up. Willy stood there with tears coming down his cheeks. I couldn’t stop mine from flowing either and we hugged. We stood there for a few good seconds, just holding each other.

“Kitchie, ya gotta promise me somethin’ okay?” he asked. I nodded.

“Ya gotta promise that you’ll never stop fighting for what you deserve, that you never forget how human you are, no matter what everyone says. And most importantly, you have to remember this: that it’s worth fighting for your freedom. You see, freedom isn’t just another privilege . . . it’s a right. Freedom is the lion’s roar, the bird’s chirp, the children’s laughter. Freedom isn’t something to question, or something to take away from others. It just simply is. Stay true to who you are, and love like you’ve loved me in this single night.”
Somehow, I ended up chuckling and Willy looked very confused.

“Willy, I haven’t loved ya for just this single night. I’ve loved ya since I can remember. I’ve always loved ya and I always will. And I promise I will never forget. I will never forget what you did for me.” I said, tears streaming down my face.

A smile like no other smile I’ve seen, but one I was too familiar with, grew on Willy’s face and he kissed me. He then bent down and place something in my hand.
“I’ll love you always, my sweet Kitchie. You never forget that.”

I nodded as he slowly backed away. I opened my hand to find a small purple flower, one that was rare here at the plantation.

I watched as he jumped in the carriage and as it road down the road. I watched as the flowers moved in the wind and as the wind blew my hair. And when I headed to the field to start my day of work, I watched as the night replayed in my mind.

We got the notice just three months later. Of course, Willy’s parents were caught off guard but, as I expected them to be angry, they were just sad a lot. As for me, I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t happy. I wasn’t content. I wasn’t anything because, after Willy died, my heart died. It wasn’t till a few months later, when the 13th Amendment passed, that I was able to snap out of my lifeless state. Even when the news had hit the plantation, I could have cared less. Willy was dead and the fact that I was legally free in the United States meant nothing to me. That is, until one night when I was laying in the field and the wind blew something in my face. As it fell to the ground and I cupped it with my hand, I noticed it was a small, purple flower, identical to the one Willy gave me when he left.

And his voice echoed in my head as if he was sitting right next to me, Stay true to who you are and love like you’ve loved me.

And as the words faded, they were replaced by the words he had spoken about freedom, the words that would eventually wake me up.

Freedom isn’t something to question, or something to take away from others. It just simply is.





It’s been 55 years since I last saw Willy. We’re in the midst of the amazing 1920s, and in my opinion, the best time period I’ve lived through so far. From the jazz, to the dances, to the art, this couldn’t be a better time. Of course, this could be a better time for us blacks. Sure, we were free and no longer enslaved, but to say that we got everything we deserved would be wrong. I continue to work for what I deserve, just as I promised Willy on that day that lasted a lifetime. I learned more from Willy than I could have ever learned from any other person. I’ll never forget what Willy did for me and I’ll never forget the importance of freedom, just like he asked. He’s my hero, my love, and my friend. The years I had with Willy are the best years of my life and years that I know will never fade from my memory. But as I’m closing in on the end of my life, I know that I’m nothing but grateful. Grateful for Willy, grateful for Willy’s strength and heart, but most importantly, grateful that Willy was able to see me for the person that I was, for the human being that I was because he didn’t just look at me, he saw me.

But my dears, it is time for me to go and what better way to end something than with the beginning?

As humans, we soon come to a difficult choice of two paths: the righteous and the honorable. Neither is easy, nor comfortable, but what exactly is the difference between the two? Some say there’s absolutely no difference, and others say they are drastically different. I guess no one really knows until they decide to choose one. But that’s the exact point, isn’t it? You see, which path you choose isn’t what’s important but the fact that we have the ability to choose is.