59 pages • 1 hour read
Lalita TademyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“We been writ out of the history of this town. They got a metal marker down to the courthouse tell a crazy twisting of what really happen Easter Sunday sixty years ago. The ones with the upper hand make the story fit how they want, and tell it so loud people tricked into thinking it real but writing down don’t make it so. The littlest colored child in Colfax, Louisiana, know better than to speak the truth of that time out loud, but real stories somehow carry forward, generation to generation.”
Polly summarizes the issue of the erasure or rewriting of minority history in the Prologue. This history of the black community in Colfax was changed to make the black men the villains and the white mob the heroes. Still, the truth is passed down from father to son in the black community. The book itself functions as the author’s attempt to set the record straight and show the truth of Easter Sunday 1873, as well as the years that followed.
“There is a special way of seeing come with age and distance, a kind of knowing how things happen even without knowing why. Seeing what show up one or two generations removed, from a father to a son or grandson, like repeating threads weaving through the same bolt of cloth. Repeating scraps at the foot and the head of a quilt.”
Polly has the gift of longevity, which allows her to act as witness to the events of the book and beyond. Due to this perspective, she is able to see the repeating patterns of family history, shown through the Smith and Tademy families, which eventually merge in the character of Ted.
“Making a better way for the children. In the end, making a better life for our children what we all want.”
Polly calls out the main motivation for many of the characters in the book: to accomplish something for the betterment of future generations. This is a universal impulse, unconnected to race or status, but is something that the black community is consistently denied, just as their equal rights during Reconstruction were revoked.
“‘Colfax and The Bottom my home. Hard and slow and ugly sometimes, but this mine, and I got the duty to make this town a place easier for my children than it be for you or for me. I’m here because it late in life, and you right. We getting old, and it up to us to move the race forward whenever and however we able.’”
Sam answers McCully’s question about why he has come to defend the courthouse, especially as Sam is not committed to using force. Sam echoes Polly’s previous observation about wanting to make life better for his children. He has big dreams and is also a man of action, so he is standing with his fellow black men to try to make a difference. However, Sam maintains that the Federal troops will arrive and that no force will be needed, since he also knows that violence rarely makes lasting positive change.
“‘Colored men already prove we able to protect the courthouse and the Republican Party. But keep the peace? That a whole different bucket of slop, unless you talking about things going backwards to how they was before. That the only peace we likely to get. The colored citizens of Colfax gone too far down the road now to give up that ground.’”
McCully addresses the sheriff and black men at the courthouse and makes the case for standing firm, even if violence is necessary. He agrees that law and order must be protected and is ready to use force to make sure that his family and his community get the rights they deserve. He understands that the White League will almost certainly attack them and is rallying the men to stand with him and defend the courthouse by telling them that they have come too far to surrender now.
“‘You be surprised what a person got in them to do when the time come.’”
Polly says this to Lucy, who is worried that Israel will not be able to stand up to the White League like McCully and Sam. True to this statement, Israel ends up surviving many horrors even when he felt like dying. The black community does the same. This also hints to Polly’s mysterious past, which she never reveals.
“‘Did we not march? Did we not march to the polls anyhow, one hundred black men here in Colfax, in 1868, cast our vote one after the other for the party of Lincoln, the Republican Party? Did we not make our voice heard? They turn out our families then, and we move them from one piece of land that weren’t ours to another. We vote for a set of white men taking the place of the ones been in charge too long, thinking the new ones treat us better. Treat us fair. But now is time to help our own self. Give our children what their children get.’”
Again, McCully addresses the black men defending the courthouse to rally them to the inevitable fight. This time, they have been abandoned by the white politicians they were set to defend. Still, calls for the men to stand firm and fight for a better future even though the politicians have let them all down. He points out that they tried to follow proper channels, like voting for men they believed in, but that now they only have themselves to look to for help.
“‘We need education, not bullets. That the only way we win. Not all these white men bad. We got to make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks. That the only way progress last.’”
As a counterpoint to McCully’s impassioned speech, Sam encourages caution and avoiding violence. He believes that lasting change—the change that will truly help their families—will only come about through establishing a school and educating the community. Rather than breaking through the “stumbling blocks” in their way, he advocates rising above them.
“‘We from far away. We wasn’t brought to this country as no slave. We come free, of our own will. We come from the Nile Delta, and my daddy pay passage by his sweat-work on a ship supposed to take him to a land of opportunity. He work on the ship for one year with no pay to come here. He thinking he come to a better place, and they make him a slave after he get here. He born free. My daddy tell me, now I tell you. […] Our real name Ta-ta-mee.’”
This is the story that Sam’s father tells him about their family name. The Tademys came to America free, and the implication is that they will be free again. Unlike most slaves, they were not given their name by their master but instead have a name from before slavery, when they lived in Egypt. It is a proud history and the reason that Sam instills a pride in the Tademy name in his family. The name gives the Tademy characters an identity and, as a result, a purpose beyond the immediate needs of the individual.
“For a small handful of men, this repeated treatment might have fed obstinate rebelliousness or a determination to run away. In the case of Israel Smith, the constant beatings accomplished exactly what the overseer had intended. They leeched the fight out of him. They caused Israel to defer to white men. They made him always afraid.”
This glimpse into Israel’s past explains his retiring nature and why he is so out of his element in the fight for the courthouse. It is also tragic, as he is never able to undo the fear instilled in him as a slave. In the end, he is more broken than ever after the Colfax Massacre and dies soon after.
“They are alone, the colored men of Colfax. For sixteen days, they have been encouraged to stand up for themselves, and promised the help of the United States government. Despite the obstacles, despite incontrovertible proof of violence surrounding them, against the better judgment of many of the men huddled in their own private reverie on the dirty courtroom floor, they have believed. In pursuit of the blind hope of opportunity, they have taken a great risk. And now they find themselves, all of them together, more alone than they have ever been.”
Standing on the brink of the fight, Israel observes how alone the black men of Colfax are. They were fighting to protect the white Republicans and to make sure they could take office. However, the politicians have fled along with many of the men who encouraged them to stand up. They have been abandoned to bear the consequences of a fight they didn’t really start.
“‘We here for the best reason there is, so our sons don’t have to be,’ McCully says. ‘You got to get shed of here, Sam. They’s big things you meant to do. You got a plan.’”
McCully invokes future generations as his reason for standing and fighting. At this point, McCully knows there is likely no way for them to survive the coming confrontation, but he expresses the importance of Sam surviving. Sam has plans for progress beyond the courthouse and one election. McCully recognizes the importance of this kind of future mindset, even if he is unable to have the same perspective himself.
“In the background, everyone hears the barrage of cannon fire, one round after another, and those in the camp try their best not to let images form around what those fearful noises signify. Denial is one of the tools that allow many of them to get through that day. Sam can only listen to the terrifying rap and chatter of metal on metal each time they fire the cannon, as if they have set loose the demons of hell to come after the trapped men’s souls in the courthouse.”
The group hiding in the swamp, including Sam, hears the battle but can do nothing to help. They are helpless while so much murder and destruction happen so close to them. To survive, they tap into denial, trying not to acknowledge the truth.
“Hiding in the woods during and after so many have died leaves Sam no peace. He revels in the fact that he is still alive, so steeped in relief that it feeds his guilt.”
Sam is one of the only men who is spared from the Colfax Massacre, and he naturally feels relief at not being a part of the destruction. However, he also feels guilty that so many of his friends, like McCully and Israel, are fighting and likely dying for the cause that he supported. These conflicting emotions fuel Sam and provide a main motivation for him for the rest of his life.
“‘Things against us no matter where we is. This my town, and no place else gonna be different till we make it different. A colored man do the best with what he get. Make stepping stones out of stumbling blocks. We make our stand in Colfax.’”
After the Colfax Massacre, Sam refuses to leave the town, even though Polly pushes for this. He knows that they will face the same challenges everywhere. He has also witnessed Levi Allen and the Republicans leaving the community and refuses to do the same. He will stay and help the community as best he can, working to overcome obstacles.
“‘Colfax Riot, my foot. Words matter in how people see, how they gonna remember. Easter Sunday 1873 be the Colfax Massacre, not the Colfax Riot, and the only shame be we didn’t get the parish power to the hands of the Republicans.’”
Sam sees how the white mob is rewriting history even just one day after the massacre, and here he expresses the importance of recording the truth of what really happened. The official story is that it was the Colfax Riot, and there is a real signpost outside the real Colfax courthouse to reinforce this false version of events.
“‘Fear is a cruel master, but hope die a hard death.’”
Polly explains that the black community was afraid of reprisals and violence following the Colfax Massacre but that their collective hope wasn’t entirely lost. Even in the face of such horror, it takes a lot to kill hope. Some of the men lost hope, like Israel, but many others, like Sam, kept hope alive.
“‘One thing always sure. Life go on with you or without you, no matter how much you seen. […] Wait long enough and you reap what you sow. That hold for men. That hold for towns. That hold for a whole country, I expect.’”
Polly explains how the black community kept going after the massacre, because life goes on no matter what. She also explains that, eventually, work pays off. She saw the work that Sam did toward a school, which Jackson continued and saw to reality. The seeds of education and nonviolence paid off in his and Polly’s children, for the betterment of the entire community. However, the idea of reaping what you sow is seen in other characters as well.
“All the boyhood scrapes and taunts and fights with David have built to this. If Noby had realized the depth of his brother’s contempt, the lingering ulceration of his resentment, he never would have extended himself so fast or thrown in his lot with David.”
Noby finally realizes that Israel’s differing treatment of his two sons has caused deep resentment in David. This is the moment when the seeds planted by Israel come to fruition, showing how damaging his preference for Noby was. This resentment forces the brothers apart permanently and contributes to Noby’s eventual exile.
“‘Never fight,’ Jackson finally says to his sons, as if the store still smoldering is no more than an object lesson staged for their benefit. ‘Only a fool don’t have sense enough to stay away from a fight can’t be won.’”
Like his father, Sam, Jackson teaches his sons to control their impulse to fight back with violence when the fight cannot be won. Despite the fact that Jackson has just watched the White League burn down his commissary and school, he resists the feelings of shame and powerlessness to teach his sons this lesson.
“Jackson tries to shake the disquieting feeling that he has been here before, standing in the wake of destruction, toothless in the face of untouchable enemies, surrounded by his sons. He knows he has not but the phantom memory stays with him and goads him nonetheless.”
Jackson experiences the helplessness that Sam felt during the Colfax Massacre, feeling it almost as a sense memory. He feels powerless in the face of the violence perpetrated by the white men, who act seemingly with impunity. Despite this, he carries on with Sam’s strategy of rising above obstacles rather than trying to smash through them.
“‘One man can’t rightly ask another to take on risk, for hisself and his family, but this community in bad need of a school. I’m not sure why I was put here on this earth, ’cept to cheat death and bring forth children, but you put here for the colored school. I’m sure of that.’”
Noby tries to encourage Jackson to reopen the black school, as it is his destiny. Noby acknowledges that he and the community cannot ask Jackson to take on the risk, especially as the White League burned down the first school and threatened the Tademy family. However, the group still needs a school to keep moving on. After Noby’s exile, the memory of this conversation spurs Jackson to take action to build a new school.
“Although his father faced the mercilessness of a white mob and escaped with his body, they robbed him of his spirit, and he lived out his days as an old man, afraid and subdued. Noby witnessed the decline up close, and he refuses to repeat the pattern. He refuses to be defeated in the same way. To keep the fear at bay, to keep himself intact, he chooses to recast the situation, to see it in a different light. There is a certain absurdity, a certain humor, in his plight, however macabre.”
As Noby is escaping to Oklahoma in a coffin, seriously wounded, he recognizes the similarities between his life and his father’s. However, he makes the conscious decision not to let his spirit be broken as Israel’s was. In this way, Noby breaks one piece of the cycle in his family’s cyclical history.
“‘Some people make up reasons we can’t be on the same level as them, even drag history into it. So we got to remind ourselves how good we is. That’s education. Keep reading, L’il Man, and don’t you get bothered because you see somebody’s ‘fact’ on a piece of paper, not if it sounds contrary to your God-given good sense. Those books written by men. More was to color how a man think and how he choose to explain is ‘environment’ as here are flavors of honey. Why you think I collect all these books? The purpose of the written word is to help you flesh out those things you know and those you don’t. Understand what I’m saying, L’il Man?’”
Jackson explains to Ted both the need for education through books and the importance of using common sense. The books and history that they study are the result of predominantly white men, after all. This is an important distinction. Throughout the book, the Tademys emphasize the importance of reading and education, but this quote defines what “education” truly means. It is not simply reading “facts” but understanding truth and perspective.
“This hat a responsibility. Names of men you never gonna know lay buried in the ground for you. Can’t change the past, but don’t mean you not in somebody’s debt. This hat mean no matter how much time pass, no matter how dark it seem, you not allowed to turn your face to the wall, throw up your hands, forget.”
Just before his death, Jackson gives the funeral hat to Ted, symbolically passing on the responsibility to keep hope alive for the community and to bear witness to the truth of the past. The truth of history must not be forgotten. This is what drove the author, Lalita Tademy, to write the book about her family.