It had been nearly 50 years before, in 1888–1898, that Armstrong first tangled with the ionists' ideas and, as Dolby comments, he was “an extreme individualist, who would never yield to the social pressures of a scientific community […]

To read him as defensively fashioning what we now call ablack identityis presentist. (McWhorter, 2009).

The road up to the house had a steep inclination.

(or, dialectally:) It is just one woman in town who can help us.