Don’t Take No For An Answer

This story is from Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich“, written in 1937.

One afternoon, Mr Darby was helping his uncle grind wheat in an old-fashioned mill. The uncle operated a large farm on which a number of share-crop farmers lived. Quietly, the door was opened, and a young black girl, the daughter of a tenant, walked in and took her place near the door.

The uncle looked up, saw the child, and barked at her roughly, “What do you want?”

Meekly, the child replied, “My mama say send her fifty cents.”

“I’ll not do it,” the uncle retorted, “now you run on home.”

“Yes sir,” the child replied, but she did not move.

The uncle went ahead with his work, so busily engaged that he did not pay enough attention to the child to observe that she did not leave. When he looked up and saw her still standing there, he yelled at her, “I told you to go on home! Now go, or I’ll take a switch to you.”

The little girl said, “Yes sir,” but she did not budge.

The uncle dropped a sack of grain he was about to pour into the mill hopper, picked up a barrel stave, and started toward the child with an expression on his face that indicated trouble.

Mr Darby held his breath. He was certain he was about to witness an assault. He knew his uncle had a fierce temper.

When the uncle reached the spot where the child was standing, she quickly stepped forward one step, looked up into his eyes, and screamed at the top of her shrill voice, “My mama’s gotta have that fifty cents!”

The uncle stopped, looked at her for a minute, then slowly laid the barrel stave on the floor, put his hand in his pocket, took out a half dollar and gave it to her.

The child took the money and slowly backed toward the door, never taking her eyes off the man whom she had just conquered. After she had gone, the uncle sat down on a box and looked out the window into space for more than ten minutes. He was pondering, with awe, the whipping he had just taken.

Mr Darby too was doing some thinking. That was the first time in all his experience that he had seen a black child deliberately master an adult white person, (remember this is 1937). How did she do it? What happened to his uncle that caused him to lose his fierceness and become as docile as a lamb?