“I would like to close with a story from my childhood, about my family, growing up in the heart of rural Alabama.

One day while growing up outside of Troy Alabama, I visited the home of an aunt of mine…Aunt Seneva.  Aunt Seneva lived in what we called a shotgun house.  At night, you could look up through the ceiling of this old shotgun house – and count the stars.  When it would rain, she would get a pail, or what we used to call a bucket, and catch the rainwater.

She didn’t have a manicured lawn; she had a plain, dirt yard.  And several times a week, she would go out into the woods and cut down some branches from a dogwood tree.  She would tie these branches together and make a broom, and she would call this broom the brush broom.  And she would sweep that dirt yard very clean two, three times a week, but especially on a Friday or a Saturday so that it would look good on the weekend.  My Aunt Seneva lived in a shotgun house.

For those of you who don’t know what a shotgun house is, let me tell you.  In a non-violent sense, a shotgun house is an old house with a tin roof, where you can bounce a basketball through the front door, and it will go straight out the back door.  My Aunt Seneva lived in a shotgun house.

One day, we were out in the yard playing—my sisters and brothers and few of my first cousins.  There were about 12 or 15 of us.  Suddenly, an unbelievable storm came up.  The wind started blowing, the thunder started rolling and lightning started flashing and the rain started beating down on the old tin roof of this shotgun house.  And we all ran inside.  My aunt became terrified. She started crying.  My Aunt Seneva told us to hold hands.  And being good little girls and boys, we did as we were told.  She thought this house was going to blow away, and we all started crying.

Well the wind continued to blow, the thunder continued to roll, the lightning continued to flash, and the rain continued to beat down on the roof of this little house.  And when one corner of the old house appeared to be lifting from its foundation, my Aunt Seneva would have us walk to that corner of the room to hold the house down.  When another corner began to lift, we would run to that corner, holding hands, trying to hold this house down with our little bodies.

We were fifteen children walking with the wind.  And we never, ever left the house.”

(Used by Lewis as an illustration of America being a nation where we all move to support the weakest)