- [last lines]
- Quentin: [voice over] On July nineteenth, nineteen sixty-two, five months after the last of these interviews was recorded, Miss Jane Pittman died at the age of a hundred and ten.
- Jimmy: That girl is gonna drink from the fountain tomorrow, Miss Jane.
- Jane Pittman: Well, God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform. I'll wait for Him to give me the sign, Jimmy. And He's right most times. I'll wait on Him.
- Jimmy: That girl is gonna drink from the fountain tomorrow, Miss Jane.
- Jane Pittman: I'm 109, uh, 110. I'm too old. I can't even do nothin' but get in the way.
- Jimmy: You can inspire the others.
- Jane Pittman: Hey, Jimmy. What you got goin' in the back of your head?
- Jimmy: We're going to have one of our girls drink from the white peoples' fountain down at the courthouse.
- Jane Pittman: The white folks' fountain?
- Quentin: Are you 110 years old?
- Jane Pittman: So they tell me.
- Quentin: How far back can you remember?
- Jane Pittman: How far back do you wanna go?
- Trooper Brown: I'm gonna call you something besides Ticey. Ticey's a slave name. And now, back in Ohio, there's lots of pretty names for a girl like you.
- Ticey: What names you got?
- Trooper Brown: Oh, uh, Eloise. Sophie, Marguerite, Jane...
- Ticey: I like Jane.
- Trooper Brown: Okay, you take it. Now, from now on your name is Jane. Not Ticey anymore. Jane.
- Jane Pittman: Man has to chop sugar cane for a while for a living to appreciate it. Most people ain't never eat sugar cane raw today, black or white.
- Jane Pittman: Ned started teachin' the peoples to write. He even wrote to Washington, D.C., but they never wrote back. You know, he found out about committees bein' formed that helped the coloreds with their rights, and so he formed one, too.
- Jane Pittman: Colored politicians used to come around and sign us up for votes and more than just a few got sent to Washington. But, Reconstruction never really worked. It wasn't too long before carpetbaggers, black and white, moved in to take from the South what the war didn't.
- Jane Pittman: I don't have what you have. I don't have the urge. I know the land, but you know the peoples. Go to 'em, Ned. Talk to 'em, show 'em.
- Mistress Bryant: Stop pointing. And watch your tongue. They may be the devil. Now, you hear me, don't you say one word about the master or one word about the silver, or they gonna skin you alive before they boil you in oil.
- Jane Pittman: Why you always talkin' about killin' for?
- Cluveau: I'm the baddest. I don't brag so much.
- Jane Pittman: Read me the sports page. I wanna hear what they say about my Jackie.
- Jimmy - Age 7: He stole three bases and he hit two homers.
- Jane Pittman: He did not!
- Jimmy - Age 7: It say so right here, Miss Jane.
- Jane Pittman: Uh, I heard the game last night on the radio, smart boy. Dodgers lost.
- Jimmy - Age 7: Yes'm. But so did the Yankees.
- Jane Pittman: Uh-huh. You see there? Jackie and the Dodgers is for the colored folks anyway. Just like Joe Louis was. You know who he is?
- Jimmy - Age 7: You told me, Miss Jane.
- Jane Pittman: Yeah. Well, did I tell ya that he let Schmeling beat him the first time, just to teach us a lesson? Did I? Well, he did, but, oh, boy, that second time was somethin' else.
- Jimmy: Some people are thinkin' of carrying guns. But we don't want anything to do with that nonsense. Others wanna carry flags. Well, what's a flag if you haven't got any meaning behind it? All we have is our strength, the strength of our people, that's what gives us meaning.
- Jane Pittman: You think I'm crazy?
- Quentin: Ma'am?
- Jane Pittman: I talk to this tree, you know? Ol' sister Oak. Look at me. I'm more than 110 years old. Now, if it ain't the Lord that's keepin' me going, what is it? See? I can sit in the sun, and I can walk. Not like I used to, but I do pretty well. Sometimes, when I feel very good, I walk all the way down to the road, and I looks at the river. Generally, though, I just come up the quarters a piece, and I sit here under this old oak. Look, the peoples done fixed me a nice clean place to sit and talk with my God. Or sometimes I'll sit here for an hour, just thankin' Him for His blessin'. And then I go back home. There's only just a few of us left, you know? And I have seen - enough years to last two lifetimes. I don't mind seein' a few more, though. He'll know when to call me. And when He call me, I'll be ready. 'Til then, I'll just have some of the children read me the Bible and the sports page and - and the funnies. I like the funnies, too, you know? And I do enjoy my vanilla ice cream. I have my vanilla ice cream. I like that. You know, this oak tree I'm sure has been here as long as this place been here. And I ain't ashamed to tell ya that I talk to it. And I ain't crazy, either. It ain't - it ain't necessary craziness to talk to the rivers and the trees. Of course, now, when you talk to the teches in the bayous, that's different, because a teche ain't nothin', and a bayou ain't much more. But, oh, the rivers and the trees. Unless'n, of course, you talk to a china ball tree. Anybody get caught talkin' to a china ball tree or a thorn tree, they got to be crazy. But an old oak, like this one here, that's been here all these years and knows more than you'll ever know, it ain't craziness, son. It's just the nobility you respects.
- Ned - Age 42: This land, America, belongs to us all. I don't mean that we own it, but that it's God's. And that makes it as much ours as any man's. You are not bested by no man. Be Americans, but first, be men.
- Lady at House: You don't think I'm gonna let you foul this cup with your black mouth, do you? Hold your hands out. Don't ya'll think I love niggers just because I'm giving you water. I hate y'all. Hate ya! All of you! You're the cause of all the trouble we're havin' around here. All this ravishin' and burnin'. Yankee and nigger soldiers all over the place. They're stealin' and killin'. They done killed my boy and my man, and you're the cause of it! And I hope to God they kill you! I'd kill ya myself if I weren't God-fearin'! Look what you done to me! Look what you done! Look what you done to me!
- Ferry Captain: Who y'all for?
- Ticey: We ain't for nobody. We just as free as you are.
- Ferry Captain: All right, little free nigger. You got money? It take a nickel to ride on here. You got a nickel each?
- Ticey: No, sir.
- Ferry Captain: Then, get on back.
- Colonel Dye: That suit ya? Stay! If that don't, then, catch up with them coattail-flyin' scallywags and the rest of them hot-footin' niggers.
- Colonel Dye: Joe, you a good man. I need y'all around here. Ain't much happened since the war, and there ain't another nigger on this place can work a horse like you. You peoples the happiest damn creatures on God's green earth. I wanna do right by y'all.
- Joe Pittman: Mighty grateful, Colonel. Mighty grateful. But Jane and me, we - we wanna go off on our own.
- Colonel Dye: You ain't grateful.
- Cluveau: They talked to me about your boy there, Jane. They don't want he build that school there, no. They say he could just stir up trouble for niggers. They want him go back. Back where he come from. They don't know Albert tell you this. They want me stop him.
- Jane Pittman: You mean kill my boy?
- Cluveau: I tell them, I say, me, you, we all time fish on Saint Shaw River. I tell them I eat at your house.
- Jane Pittman: Can you kill my boy?
- Cluveau: They don't like he preach on the river, way he do.
- Jane Pittman: Can you kill my boy?
- Cluveau: I do whatever they tell Albert.
- Jane Pittman: Can you kill my boy?
- Cluveau: Yes! Yes. I can, Miss Jane.
- Ned - Age 42: You got some black men who will tell you that the white man's the worst thing on the earth. But let me tell you this: all men are the same. The same evil you see in whites you see in blacks, and likewise the good to be found is in all men, white and black. The enemy is not skin. It's ignorance. It was ignorance that put us here in the first place. Ignorance because the big tribes of Africa warred against each other, or made slaves out of the smaller tribes. Our own black people put us in pens like hogs, destroying entire civilizations with rum and beads. And it was still the African, this time the Arabs, who sold us on the block. The white man didn't need guns, because we were weak. The French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, they took us because we were ignorant. We were apart from one another. You got folks here sayin', Let's go back to Africa. Let's go to Liberia. Well, I am not African. I'm American. A black American, and proud of it.
- Ned - Age 42: Do you know what a nigger is? First, a nigger feels below anything else on this earth. He doesn't care about himself. He doesn't care about anybody else. He doesn't care about anything. Now, he'll never be an American, and he'll never be a citizen of any other nation. But there's a big difference between a black American - and a nigger. A black American cares, and he knows, and he struggles. That's why I'm telling you this. That's why I know that no son or daughter of mine will ever be a nigger.