Disenfranchisement and injustice
When people are disenfranchised from power, it means that their views are not represented. When the Founding Fathers decried "Taxation without representation," that is essentially an argument from disenfranchisement, but for the Black family in this novel, disenfranchisement isn't just about legal representation—it goes as deep as racial prejudice itself. The novel paints a picture of systemic racial injustice, showing that it is the product of powerful men willingly exploiting the misfortune of the Black community.
The hope of urbanization
The move to New York City came with a few major changes to the Hamilton household. They felt as though perhaps they could find money in the city more easily and with more dignity than in the South, but as Fannie soon learns, the hopes of urban life come at a cost—her son drinks and becomes wrathful, driven mad by existential angst, and the daughter does earn money, first as an adult entertainer, and then as a kept, abused housewife. The meaning of these stories seems to point to the fact that systemic issues also abound in the North and in the city.
Legal injustice
When they need help the most, the Hamilton family is shamed by each community; the racial assumptions of white supremacists made it so that the Hamilton family could not properly seek justice, because every jury was willing to assume Berry committed the crimes he was accused of, just by judging him based on his skin color. When Joe murders his wife, that is a crime that he is truly guilty of, so together, we see that both those who do the right thing (Berry) and those who don't (Joe) are both given the same fate, and they court system ignores the fact that Joe is in serious need of mental health treatment.
