64 pages • 2 hours read
Kim JohnsonThe Color of a Lie
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 24-31Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 24 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of racism and death.
Calvin arrives at Sojourner. Eugene and Harry convince James to take Robert on a short trip the next morning, so they are gone when the teens are in Virginia. Calvin returns the bike to Harry.
Inside the dance, Calvin dances with Lily. Later, he talks to her about the stress of passing: The better he is at it, the worse he feels. Lily talks about how discouraging it was to see how well resourced Heritage was and wishes her friends could have the same. Since Lily’s mother won’t let her go back to school and Calvin won’t be able to talk to her over the weekend, they make a plan to meet on Tuesday in the Capewoods so that he can tell her about the trip to Virginia.
Chapter 25 Summary
Calvin, Eugene, and Harry leave before sunrise, with the brothers in the backseat. Calvin uses the Green Book to decide where to stop for gas and food. A young man named Virgil leads the CORE meeting. Virgil says that a new activist named Dr. King is trying new strategies in the fight for civil rights and might become a figurehead for their cause. People attending the meeting speak about their local strategies. Eugene shares information about Vernon’s illegal practices and Calvin getting Heritage’s registration paperwork so that they can forcibly integrate the school.
A fair-skinned man from the NAACP encourages anyone who has proof of illegal practices to get in contact with him. The crowd at the meeting is discontent about King’s nonviolent message, unsure how or why they should “not respond and take the beating or abuse” of racist violence (208), but they continue to discuss solutions.
Chapter 26 Summary
After the meeting, Calvin feels encouraged by the energy. Outside, three young white men break the glass of a car, alerting the attendees that news of their meeting got out. Downstairs in the restaurant, Calvin sees the white owner urging Virgil and the NAACP man to leave. Virgil says the men are after his companion, who is Thurgood Marshall.
Calvin offers to use his passing to get Marshall’s car and take him to safety. Calvin confronts the white men, claiming that the car they think is Marshall’s is the owner’s, which he is picking up. The men tail Calvin for a while; after they stop, he turns around to go back to the restaurant. Marshall and Virgil get in his car, and Eugene and Harry follow. When Calvin drops Marshall off, he gives Calvin his card.
Chapter 27 Summary
As they start to drive home, Eugene confesses that he didn’t think Calvin would return for them. He and Harry became displaced after their mother died and the police killed their father. They found Sojourner by luck, following music that flowed through the Capewoods.
Their car breaks down, and Calvin discovers that the white men damaged the spark plugs. He tells Eugene and Harry to stay low in the backseat while he goes to a gas station. He runs for a mile until he sees a sign for a sundown town. A white woman sees him and offers him a ride to a gas station.
He gets the spark plugs, and a station attendant offers to drive him back. Calvin gives a location two miles away from the car to be safe and then runs back. A police officer is near the car. Calvin tries to make excuses, but he can tell Calvin is Black. He beats him in the knee and head with his baton. The sun has just gone down, so he takes them into the station until morning. The next day, Calvin fixes the car, and the police escort them out of the county.
Chapter 28 Summary
Calvin drops Eugene and Harry off and goes to Alex’s house to make sure his cover wasn’t blown. Ben is there: He and Alex think that Calvin left because he was mad that Ben invited Mary to the dance on Calvin’s behalf. Calvin says that he was working at Vernon Realty the previous day; Ben says that they stopped by to look for him, but he wasn’t there. Alex manages to persuade Ben not to go to Calvin’s house, but Calvin realizes that he has to admit some version of the truth.
He says he went to spend time with an out-of-town girlfriend. Ben jokes about the girl being Lily, but when Calvin doesn’t laugh, he becomes suspicious. Calvin manages to lie, saying that his girlfriend from Chicago came to town. Ben assumes that a random person stole his bike and jumped Calvin, giving him a face injury.
When Calvin gets home, he tells his parents that he got the injury playing flag football, and they believe him.
Chapter 29 Summary
When Calvin arrives at Sojourner after school on Monday, Robert is on the porch. Someone told him about their trip to Virginia, and he is furious. Calvin tries to defend himself, but Robert stresses how his previous civil rights organizing led to Charlotte’s death. When Eugene also insists that they continue, Robert acquiesces, asking that they keep him informed.
Calvin tells Eugene the history of Robert’s organizing and why he’s reluctant to allow it. Calvin plans to ask the school board office for a stack of applications the next day, saying he needs them so that Vernon can offer them to new homebuyers.
Chapter 30 Summary
After school, Calvin meets Lily in the Capewoods. He tells her about the trip. She tells him about her and Eugene’s previous potential romance, which ended when she got frustrated about his endless planning about integrating Heritage and decided to take action.
Calvin loses track of time and is late to meet Harry with the applications. Calvin kisses Lily goodbye on the side of the road, not realizing that Ben and Alex are driving past. They stop the car when Lily leaves.
Ben confronts Calvin, claiming that he has no problem with Lily’s “kind” but also saying that relationships between Black and white people aren’t “natural.” Alex asks if Calvin has been using their friendship as a cover to meet Lily. Calvin gets angry and tells them that he’s Black, too, and that they just never noticed.
He and Ben get into a physical fight. Ben is angry that Calvin endangered Alex after Vernon investigated Alex’s family. Calvin realizes the danger he’s put his family in by telling the truth. He begs Ben not to tell anyone. Ben says he won’t, not for Calvin’s sake but because it would reflect poorly on him and Alex. Alex is crying as they leave. Calvin decides to get the school applications the next day.
Chapter 31 Summary
The next day, Calvin is nervous about Ben revealing his secret. He skips school and bikes straight to the school board. Mr. Vernon and his posse are outside the building with bats. Somehow, they know the plan. He rides to Sojourner. Eugene is accusatory, saying that Calvin was too late to get the forms because he was with Lily. Eugene says that Harry never came home the night before after he was supposed to meet Calvin. Calvin tells them about the men outside the school board building. They know about the plan but not that Sojourner is involved. Calvin wonders if Vernon noticed his missing files. He decides to go to school to see if Alex or Ben know anything about Harry.
He finds Alex at school and talks with him secretly in the bathroom. Alex wants to stay friends but doesn’t want to endanger his family. Alex swears that neither he nor Ben said anything about Calvin. Calvin wonders how Vernon knew about the plan and where Harry is.
Chapters 24-31 Analysis
This is the only section of chapters in which the action of the plot broadens outside Levittown. Calvin, Eugene, and Harry go to Virginia for a CORE meeting, and their experiences set up a comparison of what life could be like for Black Americans in the North and South in this period. Eugene and Harry started a Levittown chapter of CORE, a national group founded in Chicago that focused on non-violent acts of protests; they were responsible for the famous Freedom Rides, where interracial groups of riders rode together on buses through the South. The three boys want to learn from the more well-established CORE in Virginia so that they can take strategies for integration into their lives in Levittown, showing how groups worked together to unify their message.
In Virginia, the teens recognize the difference between de jure and de facto segregation. The latter is how Levittown is segregated: In practice, the banks and housing markets are colluding to make sure Black families don’t live in town and can’t attend Heritage. In the South, things are segregated by law. Calvin realizes that he sent the brothers toward a “WHITES ONLY bathroom” that he “hadn’t even noticed” (205), and even approaching that bathroom makes Eugene think that the restaurant will “throw [them] out on sight” (205). Calvin realizes that his passing privilege keeps him safer than Eugene and Harry in areas that have either type of segregation, although he still grapples with The Psychological Impact of Passing.
The plot leaving Levittown also allows the boys to witness larger debates happening within civil rights circles about how to conduct their fight for racial equality. The two debates at the meeting are about whether their movement needs a figurehead and to what degree they should use non-violent tactics. One attendee thinks they “shouldn’t have to have a messenger” because “[t]here’s injustice everywhere” (206). The man leading the meeting, Virgil, thinks they need “something big to happen for people to believe [they] can win this fight” and a messenger to put forward their argument (205). This debate casts Calvin’s previous struggles in a new light. For instance, Miss Brower was sympathetic to Lily but didn’t think that Levittown was ready for segregation or that Lily could win her fight. The fact that injustice is everywhere, to her, proves that they cannot win. Virgil’s strategy is more likely to get across to someone like Miss Brower.
The “catalyst” that the members discuss is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. They debate his strategy of non-violence. Some members think this means letting themselves “get beat and not fight back” (207). Others see promise in his “new strategy” about looking for “young Black leaders with immaculate stories that can draw more sympathy” (207), like “Mothers. Teachers. Preachers” (208). King’s theory, as Virgil explains, is that seeing people like these be attacked with racist abuse will wake people up to the true violence of racism and segregation. This foreshadows Johnson’s later allusions to the protests that build around what happens to Rosa Parks, which exactly fits the paradigm that Virgil discusses. The Virginia CORE meeting shows how people on the ground struggled with deciding how to approach their fight against Racial and Social Inequality in Midcentury America.
While driving in Virginia, Calvin recognizes that passing is all about context. This contributes to the psychological impact he experiences while passing. While he used to drive through dangerous locales with his father and he is “used to playing white full time in Levittown,” that’s not the same as “travelling with two darker-skinned boys” (203). When Calvin is alone, like when he is walking to the gas station or is with a similarly light-skinned person like his father, he is perceived as white. Being with Eugene and Harry provides context that makes people increasingly likely to perceive Calvin as Black. The author shows this to be true when they encounter a police officer who tells Calvin, “I know what you are, and you not fooling anyone” (225). This encounter shows how arbitrary and contextual perceptions of passing are. It also draws attention to Calvin’s increasing danger: As he spends more time helping the people at Sojourner, there is a greater chance he’ll be seen with them and found out.
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