What were the living conditions for the citizens of Stamps, particularly how the two communities were segregated.

Stamps seemed stuck in time. The only train that ran through the town did not stop. The KKK were alive and well and poverty was the main situation for most blacks and whites.

Stamps was as slow coming out of the Depression as it had been getting into it. World War II was well along before there was a noticeable change in the economy of that near-forgotten hamlet.

Certainly, whites might have been a little better off economically but disaster was common to both communities.

Everything that does happen in Stamps seems to be disastrous: "droughts, floods, lynchings and deaths" . And the residents don't even try to change anything; they just continue with their lives, resigned to their poverty, believing that God will reward them eventually.