Growing Up in Jim Crow Times

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This is an autobiographical account of Richard Wright, a Negro boy who lived in America during the Post-Civil War days when the lives of the people were ruled over by Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow is the practice or policy of segregating Negroes in public places, public conveyances, and the like. Wright’s first lesson on how to live as a Negro took place when he was quite small. (Wright, n.d.)

He remembers that his house stood behind the railroad tracks in a neighborhood without a touch of green. Instead, what surrounded his home was a yard full of paved cinders. Cinders made fine weapons in hot wars which the children played. At first, it was fun. Richard never realized the appalling disadvantage of a cinder environment until one day when his gang found itself in a war with white boys who lived beyond the tracks.

As usual, Richard’s gang laid down their cinder barrage, but the white boys retaliated with a bombardment of broken bottles. The whites had the advantage of having places to hide- behind trees, hedges, and the sloping embankments of their lawns; whereas the black boys had no such fortifications.

During a retreat that followed, a broken milk bottle hit Richard behind the ear, opening a deep gash that resulted in a hemorrhage. The black army, demoralized, scurried home, leaving Richard immobilized. Fortunately, a kind neighbor rushed him to a doctor who took three stitches on his neck.

Arriving home, the boy, nursing his wound waited for his mother to arrive from work. He felt that a grave injustice had been done to him. Throwing cinders was fun, but throwing broken bottles was dangerous.

When night fell and his mother returned; he babbled out the story, expecting a little sympathy. Instead, she slapped him, dragged him inside the house, stripped him naked, and beat him till he developed a high fever while imparting what he calls “gems of Jim Crow wisdom.” He was never to throw cinders again nor to fight white folks again. Didn’t he realize that she worked so hard each day in the hot kitchens of the whites in order to put food on the table? It would never do to antagonize them. She ended by telling him he should be thankful they didn’t kill him.

This was not a case of “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” but of sparing the rod and subjecting the boy to a future that could include cruelty and even premature death. His mother was right. From then on, the charm of cindery wore off; and the trees, trimmed hedges, and cropped lawns surrounding the white houses became for him a symbol of fear. Richard’s painful experience paved the way for his acceptance and adjustment to the condescending ways of white folk.

Much later, the family moved from Arkansas to Mississippi and was lucky to live in the heart of the local Black Belt where there were black churches, black schools, and black groceries. But this did not last. After grammar school, Richard had to find a job for his mother could no longer support him. His first job was with an optical company in Jackson where he was interviewed and looked over as a prize poodle. The owner hired him and introduced him to his co-workers, a white man of thirty-five named Pease, and a white teenaged boy named Morris. They were to help the newcomer adjust and teach him the ropes. His salary would be five dollars weekly for he was not learning anything about the mechanics of grinding lenses. When he asked Morris about it, the latter blew up, “What yuh tryin’ to, nigger, git smart?” he asked. Then Richard went to Pease and received another humiliating answer. They told him, “This is a white man’s job around here and you better watch yourself!”

From then on, they changed toward him. Then one day, both accused him of calling Mr. Pease just Pease. Morris grabbed Richard by the collar, ramming his head against the wall. Morris told him, “I heard you call him Pease, ‘n if yuh say didn’t, yuh’re callin’ me a lie, see?” He waved a steel bar menacingly. Richard was damned if he said he did and damned if he didn’t. Finally, he had to leave. They warned him not to show up again or tell the boss.

When Richard told the folks at home, they refused to see his side. They called him a fool and told him never again to exceed his limits. When you are working for white folks, you get to “stay in your place.”

Richard learned his next Jim Crow lesson on his next job which was portering in a clothing store. One morning, while polishing the brass outside, the boss and his twenty-year-old son got out of their car and dragged a Negro woman into the store. A policeman stood nearby unconcernedly. After a while, shrill screams emanated from the rear of the store, and later, the woman stumbled out crying and bleeding. Outside, the policeman nabbed her on the charge of being drunk and hurled her into a patrol wagon. What hope is there for a colored citizen living in a place where the very persons hired to keep law and order are the same ones who violate the law?

When Richard entered the store, father and son were laughing. The floor was bloody, and seeing that Richard was shocked, they explained, “Boy, that’s what we do to niggers when they don’t pay their bills.” At noon that day, Richard recounted the incident to his fellow porters who never registered any surprise. One of them asked, “Huh, is that all they did to her?” Hell, it’s a wonder they didn’t lay her once they got through.” This is a clear example of total disregard for human rights as well as total disrespect for womanhood.

Richard was learning his Jim crow lessons, but apparently not fast enough. One day while delivering packages in the suburbs, he punctured his bicycle tire. As he walked his bicycle along, a car stopped and a white man called out, “What’s the matter, boy?” Richard told him and was offered a ride. When the car started, he saw that it was full of young men drinking. He was offered a drink, demurred, but failed to say “sir” to the man. For that, he was hit between the eyes with an empty whiskey bottle.”Nigger, ain’ yuh learned no better sense ‘n that yet, to say sir to a white man?” They left with the “comforting words”, “Nigger, you’re a lucky bastard, ’cause if you’d said the ‘t somebody else, yuh might have been a dead nigger now.” This is an example of an already subordinate people unable to defend themselves from further abuse.

Negroes living in the South dread the idea of being caught alone in the streets in white neighborhoods after sundown, unlike the whites who go unmolested. One Saturday night, Richard made some deliveries in a white neighborhood. He was pedaling furiously when a police car jammed him into the curb. The policeman ordered him to dismount and put up his hands. They found nothing incriminating. They left after admonishing him, “Boy, tell your boss not to send you out in white neighborhoods this time of the night.”

Richard’s next job was as a hall boy in a hotel. Here, his Jim Crow education broadened and deepened. When the bellboys were busy, he was often called to assist them. Many of the rooms were occupied by prostitutes, naked most of the time. The bellboys’ presence awoke in them no sense of shame, for the former were not regarded as humans.

Once, Richard was called to wait upon one of the women. She and her partner were in bed together and uncovered. She said she wanted some liquor, slid out of bed to get money from the drawer. As Richard watched her, “Nigger, what in hell you looking at?” the white man asked. “Nothing”, he replied. “Keep your eyes where they belong, if you want to be healthy!” was his advice.

One night, a Negro maid and Richard fell in to walk part of the way home together, since she lived in his direction. As they passed the night watchman, he slapped her bottom and stared at Richard. Suddenly, he pulled his gun and asked, “Nigger, don’t you like it?” Richard was forced to assent. Later, ashamed to face her, he walked ahead of her. She caught up with him and said, “Don’t be a fool, yuh couldn’t help it!”

The two aforementioned happenings taught Richard to always keep his ‘urts about him in order to survive and to do so without losing respect for himself and his fellowman. Richard learned his Jim Crow lessons well enough to keep his hotel job until he left Jackson for Memphis. In the new place, he applied for a job in an optical company and was hired. Here, his Jim Crow education assumed a different form. It was not longer brutally cruel, but subtly cruel. Here he learned to lie, steal, to dissemble: He learned to play that dual role that every Negro must play in order to survive.

In the process of development from youth to maturity, moral or otherwise, Richard underwent various experiences that smacked “man’s inhumanity to man.”

Richard’s hunger for knowledge was satisfied in the following manner: One day, he mustered enough courage to ask one of his white co-workers to help him get books from the library in his name. He would write a note to the librarian saying, “Please help this nigger boy have the following books.” And then Richard would sign in with the white man’s name. If any of the white patrons suspected that some of the volumes had been in the house of a nigger, they would not have tolerated it at all. The acquisition of education was never so difficult for an underprivileged black youngster.

This autobiographical sketch of Richard Wright is by no means a singular experience but the general rule. The evidence that ensues, reveals the nature of life led by the Negroes in the South. “At the end of the Civil War, the Southern labor system was totally disrupted by the freeing of four million slaves. To most Southerners, more than ever, making a simple living became a daily struggle.” (Washington, 1978).

It is no wonder that Richard Wright’s mother was desperate in keeping her job as a cook for the whites, to a point where she was forced to subject her son to severe child harassment – undue punishment for such a young person. Yet, this mother was very lucky to have been able to hold on to her job despite the high rate of unemployment in those days.

The following comments are drawn from a psychological study done by Charles S. Johnson, a black sociologist and later, president of Fiske University in Nashville, Tennessee. Because the study was sociological and not historical, no dates were given:

“The Negro in his place is really an assistant in the South. He’s what the

Lord Almighty intended for him to be, a servant of the people. We couldn’t get along without him.”

-a former mayor of a North Carolina town

“This is a cotton belt and it is essential that we have Negro labor. When our own runs low, we import it. Our attitude is that the white man is superior and the colored are looked on as servants.”

-a Norfolk club woman

“They should be free, but they are more capable of the domestic arts than the fine arts. All human beings are fashioned to certain places, and theirs is utilitarian rather than artistic. It’s due to their savage background and slavery.”

Black responses to subordination

“White children call me nigger sometimes. I don’t say nuttin ’cause I know I’m a nigger and I don’t want to get in no trouble. My dad always told me not to pay any attention to white children when they meddle me.”

“Let the Negro stay to his self and the white man stay to they self, and they never be no trouble. I don’t want my children to mix with white children. It just ain’t good for white and colored children to mix or for two races to mix.”

“I stay as far away from ‘em as I can. The farther they is from me, the better I like it.”

“I have had it pretty easy with these white people since I have been here. I know just how to get along with them. I can make them think they, own the world. It is nothing but a lot of jive that I hand them… but a man has to be less than a man to get along most of the time.”

In Wright’s autobiographical novel, Native Son, Jake is humiliated by his white supervisor for slow work and Jake turns to one of his black friends, Slim, for support, saying, “The white folks just wants to ride a nigger to death.” Slim answers, “there ain’t nothing a man can do about it.”

From the same work, “It was when Bigger read the newspapers or magazines, went to the movies or walked the streets with crowds, that he felt what he wanted; to merge himself with others and be a part of this world, to lose himself in it so he could find himself, to be allowed a chance to be like others, even though he was black.” (Perez, 2001).

How has Black America progressed since the 1960s? A TV program was held on August 21, 1966, in which civil rights leaders were present. The program soon developed into a lively debate as to whether Black America was making any progress; whether that progress was quick enough; and what the proper methods were to achieve further change.

Floyd McKissick, national director of Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) states that “Things have not changed much for the masses. Some progress has been made, but by and large, the average black man has not profited in the last 10 years.”

Blacks have gone far, however toward making their presence felt in the mass media, but once again, the lack of political and economic control has limited the nature and scope of the advance. The future of Black America will probably follow the pattern established during the past decade. The tasks of developing group strengths resisting setbacks, and consolidating and expanding political and economic gains will go on. The outcome – integration, separation, liberation, or some combination of the three is uncertain.

After examining the evidence, we are faced with the problems of how to determine meaningful indexes of progress or change and how to characterize the relationship between Black Americans and White Americans. Our task is to decide which areas are most important in evaluating the progress of Blacks as a whole. Are politics and education the crucial areas? Or are employment, occupational diversification, and family structure?

As in his autobiography and fiction, the belief that subordinated groups have the capacity to resist their ideology–saturated environment, tempers Wright’s pessimism. As Wright mentions in Black Boy about his own youthful dreams – “Anything seemed possible, likely, feasible, because I wanted everything to be possible…. Because I had no power to make things happen outside of me in the objective world, I made things happen within. Because my environment was bare and bleak, I endowed it with unlimited potentialities, redeemed it for the sake of my own hungry and cloudy yearning.”

Lastly, in Wright’s Blueprint for Negro Writing, 1938, he believes that “No theory of life can take the place of life. The meter may, with disgust and revulsion, depict the horrors of capitalism encroaching on the human being. Or may with hope and passion, depict the faint stirrings of a new and emerging life….His vision need not be simple. The presentation of their lives should be simple, but all the complexity, the strangeness, the magic wonder of life that plays like a bright sheen over the most sordid existence, should be there.”

References

Wright, R. (n.d.) The ethics of living Jim Crow. American Stuff
Wright, R. (1938) Blueprint for Negro Writing
Wright, R. (1940) Native Son. New York: Harper Collins, 1993
Washington, B.T. and Views of Black Contemporaries (1974) The Study of American History, Vol II
Perez, V. (2001) Movies, Marxism and Jim Crow: Richard Wright’s Cultural Criticism.

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Growing Up in Jim Crow Times

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