Someone Knows My Name

When Aminata reaches Port Roseway—renamed Shelburne—it is snowing, and there are thick pine forests around the new town. She is the only free Negro disembarking the ship, and the pier is full of whites who ignore her. Aminata first enters a coffee house and is denied service after being called a “nigger.” She then enters a door under a sign that reads The Shelburne Crier and meets Theo McArdle, a short white man arranging letters for printing. He doesn’t mind her race and allows her to proofread in exchange for tea and information. Theo directs her to Birchtown, a town where free Negroes live, and to the Land Registry Office. There she finds only a blind, elderly Negro. He introduces himself as a preacher named Daddy Moses and tells her to come to Birchtown. When he tells her that there is no land available for either whites or blacks, Aminata thinks back to Chekura’s realism. Jason—the 18-year-old who pushes Daddy Moses’s cart—reminds her of Mamadu, who would have been 20. On the way, Aminata trusts Daddy Moses with her entire story. Daddy Moses invites Aminata to temporarily move into the shack he shares with his wife.