In the following excerpt from Chapter 3, Angelou recalls the sheriff of Stamps, who once rode up to Momma's store to warn them about an upcoming KKK raid. She utilizes metaphor as a means of analyzing the sheriff's behavior:

[The used-to-be sheriff's] confidence that my uncle and every other Black man who heard of the Klan's coming ride would scurry under their houses to hide in chicken droppings was too humiliating to hear. Without waiting for Momma's thanks, he rode out of the yard, sure that things were as they should be and that he was a gentle squire, saving those deserving serfs from the laws of the land, which he condoned.

In this passage, Angelou compares the Sheriff to a "gentle squire" and herself and her family to "deserving serfs." Angelou uses this figurative language to interpret the Sheriff's behavior, pointing out the irony in the fact that this man views himself as their beneficent savior. In reality, he works as a tool of the very White supremacist system that oppresses Angelou and her family.

It is also important to note that through the aforementioned metaphor, Angelou draws connections between European feudalism and the American South. Both the American South and European feudal states had a "ruling" class (feudal lords/kings in Europe, wealthy White people in the South) and an oppressed class (peasants/serfs in Europe, formerly-enslaved Black Americans in the South).