124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it
and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but
by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother,
Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the
time they were thirteen years old--as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered
it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny band prints appeared in the
cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful
of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn
in a line next to the doorsill. Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods: the
weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once--the
moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or
witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their
grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all
by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn't have a
number then, because Cincinnati didn't stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been
calling itself a state only seventy years when first one brother and then the next
stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the
lively spite the house felt for them.
JimCrow
(1876-1965)
Over a century ago, prodded by the demands of
four million men and women just emerging from
slavery, Americans made their first attempt to live
up to the noble professions of their political creed
-- something few societies have ever done. The
effort produced a sweeping redefinition of the
nation's public life and a violent reaction that
ultimately destroyed much, but by no means all, of
what had been accomplished. From the
enforcement of the rights of citizens to the
stubborn problems of economic and racial justice,
the issues central to Reconstruction are as old as
the American republic, and as contemporary as
the inequalities that still afflict our society.”
-Eric Foner Reconstruction
"The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the
sun; then moved back into slavery"
-W.E.B. DuBois Reconstruction
Chicago map by race
Red = White, Blue = Black, Yellow = Asian
Chapter II “The Negro American Family”
At the heart of the deterioration of the fabric of Negro society is the deterioration of the
Negro family […] The white family has achieved a high degree of stability and is maintaining
that stability. By contrast, the family structure of lower class Negroes is highly unstable, and in
many urban centers is approaching complete breakdown. […] In essence, the Negro community
has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is to out of line with the rest of
the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole, and imposes a
crushing burden on the Negro male and, in consequence, on a great many Negro women as
well. […]
Chapter IV “The Tangle of Pathology”
In 1 out of 4 Negro families where the husband is present, is an earner, and someone else in the
family works, the husband is not the principal earner. More important, it is clear that Negro
females have established a strong position for themselves in white collar and professional
employment, precisely the areas of the economy which are growing most rapidly, and to which
the highest prestige is accorded. […] Negro youth grow up with little knowledge of their
fathers, less of their fathers' occupations, still less of family occupational traditions.
Negro children without fathers flounder -- and fail.
-The Negro Family: The Case for National Action
(aka the Moynihan Report 1965)
“It was by destroying the Negro family under
slavery that white America broke the will of the
Negro people. Although that will has reasserted
itself in our time, it is a resurgence doomed to
frustration unless the viability of the Negro family
is restored.”
-Moynihan Report
“Right off it was clear, to schoolteacher especially, that there
was nothing to claim. The three (now four – because she’d
had the one coming when she cut) pickaninies they had
hoped were alive and well enough to take back to Kentucky,
take back and raise properly to do the work Sweet Home
desperately needed, were not. Two were lying open-eyed in
sawdust; a third pumped blood down the dress of the main
one – the woman schoolteacher bragged about the one he
said made fine ink, damn good soup, pressed his collars the
way he liked besides having at least ten breeding years left.
But now she’d gone wild, due to the mishandling of the
nephew who’d overbeat her and made her cut and
run” (175-6)
“Whatever the risk of confronting the reader with what
must be immediately incomprehensible in that simple,
declarative, authoritative sentence, the risk of unsettling
him or her, I determined to take it. Because the in-mediasres opening that I am so committed to is here excessively
demanding. It is abrupt and should appear so. No native
informant here. The reader is snatched, yanked, thrown
into an environment completely foreign, and I want it as
the first stroke of the shared experience that might be
possible between the reader and the novel’s population.
Snatched just as the slaves were from one place to another, from any
place to another, without preparation and without defense. No lobby,
no door, no entrance – a gangplank, perhaps (but a very short
one)” (161)