This is a collection of six short pieces. Here is a brief overview of each of these six essays and stories.
The Ethics of Living Jim Crow
As a Black man during the Jim Crow era, Wright describes what that time was like, what the effects of racism were on his childhood perception of reality. He remembers that when he used to play fighting games with his friends, he would get in trouble, but the white children played those games within their own group and no one ever complained. He was ostracized. He remembers that there were entire businesses where white men could use Black women for sex, but if a white prostitute was caught with a Black man, they would castrate or kill him. He says his life lacked the dignity he deserved during that era.
Big Boy Leaves Home
This story is about Big Boy and his friends who go down to swim at a local swimming hole. There is a white man who will not allow them to swim, but they strip naked and play in the water anyway. While naked, a white woman finds them and panics, thinking they will rape her, so she summons her husband Jim who shoots two of Big Boy's friends, and Big Boy fights him, takes the rifle and kills Jim. Big Boy escapes his lynch mob, but Bobo has his skin melted by hot tar.
Down by the Riverside
There is a flood and a man named Mann has to take his family up a hill to survive it. His wife Lulu is in labor, so he sends his cousin, Bob, to sell the donkey and buy a boat, but Bob steals a boat and spends all the money, bringing only $15 back. Mann mans the stolen boat and takes his wife to a hospital, but a white man sees the boat and starts shooting at him—it was his boat. He returns fire and murders the man in front of an audience, trying to save his wife, but when he arrives at the hospital, she and the baby are dead. He runs to the hills to avoid the law, but he can't get far. They shoot him down by the river.
Long Black Song
Sarah is a young Black woman whose husband, Silas, works selling cotton. Her baby keeps her busy, and she is waiting for her husband when a man comes to the door to sell her a graphophone. He rapes her in her own home and leaves the graphophone. The next day, Silas returns and violently beats his wife for sleeping with a white man, though she was literally raped. When the salesman returns to collect payment for the graphophone that Sarah rejected, Silas pistol-whips him and shoots him in the head. He is killed brutally by a mob and Sarah runs to the hills with her baby.
Fire and Cloud
Taylor is a preacher whose congregation is hungry. The government won't provide assistance, and the community is starving. He tries to rally their efforts to gain leverage to get help from the authorities, but no one will listen. He tries the Communists, but they aren't interested. Meanwhile, a deacon has planned a coup to overthrow his ministry. Taylor is lynched randomly by white men who torture him. He decides to march for freedom and for food, deciding that his suffering is representative of his community.
Bright and Morning Star
Sue's sons are Communists. Sug is already imprisoned and is only mentioned. The other son is Johnny-Boy. The family replaced their Christian faith with Communism. Over dinner, Sue describes her distrust of white Communists. She thinks their vision for total utopia still leaves Black people disenfranchised. A white Communist named Booker exploits her for information, which she gives him, not knowing his is a spy. Johnny-Boy is captured by the police, and when the family finds the sheriff with Johnny-Boy in the woods, the police murder them in cold blood.
