She will never forget the last time she saw George alive. She was eight at the time, hunkering in the chicken coop, scared half to death, when two black cars drove up to their house. Neither her mother, also Aime, a cook, nor her father, George senior, were home when white law enforcement officers came and took away George and her stepbrother, Johnny, in handcuffs. Johnny was later let go. She idolised George and followed him everywhere. He called her his shadow.

Though she left the south long ago, Aime’s rich, deep voice resonates with the vowels of her birthplace. But recalling her last words to George, it alters as if she’s gone back in time, to the high-pitched voice of a girl. “I said: ‘Oh George, are you leaving me? Where you going?’ He told me to find Charles and Katherine and tell them he was taken away.

“I never saw him again until he was in his casket,” said Aime. “That is something I will always see in my memories. His face was burned.”