Mrs. Keep had made a practice of checking in on me since my arrival. She must have noticed that I didn’t yet fit in. One evening early in the semester, she knocked on my door and poked her head into my room. Like so many white women here, she wore her snowy hair pulled into a bun on the crown of her head, and she dressed all in black. “I’d like to invite you to our weekly abolitionist meeting,” she said in a voice as soft as her plump pink face. 

         “Abolitionist” was a word I had heard often, but whose meaning I could not comprehend, so surprising was it to learn there were white people who opposed slavery enough to risk arrest and jail to end it. Here was a chance to enjoy some co...

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