One boy was called “’Squire Johnson Brown.” It seemed that his mother, “since dis time come,” (as they always say when they mean since their emancipation,) had chosen to call herself Brown; and, like a dutiful son, he thought it would be no more than respectable that his last name should be the same as his mother’s.
Reid describes a boy's choice of surname reflecting his family's new identity post-emancipation.
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