Lucindy mused a moment, concluded: "Dem was good days, honey; mighty good. But us shorely is in a bad fix now an' needs help mighty bad. It jest ain't de same no more."
[Lucy Kimball]
Interview with Lucy Kimball
—Francois Ludgere Diard, Mobile, Alabama
THE FULFILLED WISH OF MAMMY LUCY KIMBALL
I made two visits to the home of Mammy Lucy Kimball. The first was during the month of April, 1937; the next was nearly a month later. On the first trip I had a very successful talk with the old Negro woman, but on the last, she wasn't at home, and so the information I sought had to wait. I was very disappointed that I couldn't see her on my second venture, but it was impossible.
Mammy Lucy had not grown very feeble when I last saw her, and her methodical mode of living can be attributed to her consciousness of the venerable age of eighty-five years which she had reached. She was born into slavery in 1851 at Swift's Landing near the town of Blakeley, in Baldwin County. She was a slave in the Charles Hall family of that county before and during the War between the States. In 1907, she came to work for the T.S. Fry and Santos Rubira families of Mobile.
Following the War between the States, Mammy Lucy Kimball worked in various families at the summer resorts of Baldwin County.
When a young girl, Mammy Lucy performed the duties of a children's nurse, and worked as a dining room servant. She had some education, and as she had worked in families of refinement and culture all her life, her manner was that of a well educated person. However, like the average educated Negro, she still displayed the characteristics of the Negro of the ante-bellum days. She said that she strictly adhered to old fashioned methods, such as: going to church twice a week, not believing in doctors, and always taking home-concocted remedies.
I asked her if she believed in carrying a rabbit's foot for luck, to which she responded:
"Honey, you don' think I'm like these other Negroes, who still believe in that old nonsense? I might tell the children that a rabbit foot brings good luck because it is an old custom for superstitions persons to carry one, but, honey, you'd have just as good luck if you carried brick-bats in your coat. My white people in Baldwin County never brought me up to believe in such things."