Big Boy
In Big Boy Leaves Home, we meet a character named Big Boy who goes swimming in a natural spring, but some white guy tells him that since he is there, that Big Boy and his friends must leave because they are Black and bothersome to the white man—but they stay and swim. A woman finds them skinny-dipping and has an extremely hateful moment of panic, calling her husband, telling him that they were going to rape her, so that he would shoot them. Big Boy overwhelms him and kills him.
Farmer Mann
Mann is a nice guy, basically, who wants to do the best he can for his family. But he has a stupid cousin who is a criminal and a liar, and when a flood prevents Mann from getting his pregnant wife to a hospital, he gives that cousin the resources to buy a boat, but instead, he blows the money and steals a boat. Well, then the boat owner mistakes Mann for the thief and start firing at him, so Mann kills him.
Bob
Bob is Farmer Mann's dishonorable cousin who betrays the family by spending the family's resources on himself while Mann's wife is dying of labor complications. He doesn't care about that, and he certainly isn't going to a boat. He decides to simply steal one instead. It is because of his short-sighted and corrupt ways that Mann and his wife dies.
Sarah
Sarah is a young black mother who is raped by a salesman. To make matters worse, the salesman leaves his wares with the shattered, injured woman, and tells her he will be back in the morning to confront her husband about payment. When Silas, Sarah's husband, shows up, he puts two and two together, but instead of listening to his wife, he beats her violently as if she had purposefully gotten herself raped. Then, when the salesman returns, he murders the man, so Sarah flees to the mountain with her baby.
Silas
A hot-tempered man whose life is still a little too close to the cotton-fields for comfort, and he takes that frustration out on his wife in a moment of panic, not realizing the severity of his betrayal—his own wife was raped by an entitled, scummy salesman, and he treats her as if it is her fault. Then, when he kills that man, the community treats him like it was all his fault all along, and he is killed by an incredibly violent mob.
Preacher Taylor
This preacher has been trying to organize some kind of rally to help end the Jim Crow era, but he can only find Communists to help him, and he's smart enough to know they're trying to trick his church into being like pawns for their broader strategies. He plays it cool and leaves, but randomly, he is kidnapped and tortured by racists. He feels this martyrdom has allowed him to understand the true severity of the issue, so he marches anyway.
