Summary: Chapter 9
Richard takes a job at a clothing store where the white
bosses humiliate the black customers on a daily basis. Richard
sees the shopkeepers beat a black woman who is unable to pay the
credit installments on her clothing purchase. One day, Richard’s
bicycle gets a flat tire after he makes a clothing delivery. A group
of young white men offer to let him ride back to town on the side
of their car. When Richard neglects to call one of the white youths
“sir,” they smash a whiskey bottle in his face, causing him to fall
from the speeding vehicle. He walks back to town.
Not long thereafter, when Richard makes a delivery in
a white neighborhood, suspicious policemen force him to the side
of the road and aggressively search him at gunpoint. They tell Richard
to tell his boss not to send him on delivery runs in white neighborhoods
after dark. Eventually, Richard’s boss fires him because he does
not like Richard’s silent disapproval of the way he runs the store
and treats black people.
Griggs, a former classmate, admonishes Richard for not
knowing how to act around white people. He tells Richard that his
reputation as a troublemaker has already been spread to many potential white
employers. After repeatedly stressing that Richard must swallow
his pride and learn to feign humility in order to survive around whites,
Griggs helps Richard secure a job with Mr. Crane, a Northerner interested
in training a black boy in the trade of optics and lens-making.
Richard is elated and eagerly reports to Crane’s optical
shop. However, Richard’s white coworkers, Pease and Reynolds, refuse
to teach him how to work the machines, asserting that it is “white man’s
work.” They belittle Richard with crude questions about his anatomy
and constantly attempt to intimidate him. One day, Pease says that
Reynolds has told him that Richard once referred to him as simply
“Pease” rather than the more respectful “Mr. Pease.” Richard knows
he is in a trap: if he admits to this charge, Pease will punish
him for disrespect, but if he denies the charge, Reynolds will punish
Richard for implying that he is a liar. Richard knows that the men
are trying to drive him out of the shop, so he quits.
Richard feels totally demoralized. The sympathetic Crane
calls Richard into his office and asks him what happened, but Richard refuses
to tell, out of fear that Reynolds and Pease will gather a mob and
kill him. Crane then pays Richard more than he has earned for the
week, apologizes for being unable to do more, and tells Richard he
approves of Richard’s plan to move to the North. Crane says he understands
that blacks lead a hard life in the South, and believes that a move
to the North is perhaps Richard’s best hope. Richard feels terribly
violated and ashamed. He thanks Crane hastily and leaves, in his
own words, as “a blind man.”
Summary: Chapter 10
Richard drifts from job to job, so exhausted and dispirited
by the constant threat of racism that he frequently makes mistakes
that get him fired. When the summer ends and many of the other boys
return to school, jobs become plentiful. Richard takes a job at
the same hotel where his classmate’s brother had worked until he
was murdered for consorting with a white prostitute. At the hotel,
Richard mops hallways with a group of young black men, including
one who amuses Richard because he takes pride in having gonorrhea,
which he claims is a mark of manhood. One day, a white security
guard fondles one of the black maids, and Richard’s obvious displeasure leads
the guard to threaten him with a gun.
