From A Flicker of Light and Again Darkness to Two Letters From Kansas

Summary

A Flicker of Light and Again Darkness

Life on Bone's plantation initially is good. An educated black man is the schoolteacher and teaches kids in the day and adults at night. Each night, a different family feeds him. When it is Jane's turn, she sends Ned out to find a plate and fork for the teacher but later discovers that every family borrowed the same plate and fork each night because it was the only one. Ned learns how to read, although Jane never attends the school herself.

Mr. Bone is a Republican, and the anti-slavery Republican stance allows for some black leaders to emerge in helping to reorganize the south. One day during a public political rally, a large fight breaks out, and Jane hides with Ned under the stage. Later, she finds out that the secret white societies, the Ku Klux Klan, the White Brotherhood, and the Camellias of Luzana, caused the trouble. These groups frequently beat and kill blacks or the whites who help them, with little justification. Sometime later, Mr. Bone suddenly tells his workers that he no longer owns the plantation as the original owner, a Confederate Colonel named Dye, has managed to buy it back with some money borrowed from northern whites. Within a few days, Bone, many of the blacks, and the schoolteacher leave. When Colonel Dye arrives, he says that he will hire a new schoolteacher and pay the same wage as Bone. Still, something has changed. The slaves have to identify their plantation master if they walk into town, as they would have had to in slavery days. The new schoolteacher is white and teaches only for a few months out of the year. All of the Yankee soldiers and Freedom Bureau members have disappeared, so Louisiana becomes almost as it was before slavery.

Exodus

Many black people start fleeing the south when they see that conditions are worsening. Originally many people wanted to stay because Frederick Douglass told them to and because they believed the promises of the Freedom Bureau. But with the changing conditions, they leave. At first, the whites feel glad that they are going but soon try to stop them because they need the labor. The blacks keep leaving—sneaking off in the silence of night to search for a better place to live.

Ned Leaves Home

Ned now is about seventeen and has changed his name to Edward Stephen Douglass from Ned Brown and Ned Douglass. He becomes active in a committee that helps blacks flee the plantations. One day, Colonel Dye tells Jane that Ned needs to stop what he is doing, but when Jane tells Ned, Ned refuses. Some time later a group of Ku Klux Klan members, wearing hoods, appear at Jane's cabin. They strike her several times, but Ned is not there. When he returns later that night and sees her face, he tells her that they are leaving. Jane does not want to leave because she does not feel it is her time. Ned, who treats Jane as his surrogate mother and calls her mama, is very upset and wants her to come. She insists on staying though, and they both weep when he leaves later than night.

Two Letters From Kansas

Jane starts spending time with a widower named Joe Pittman, and they decide to get married. Jane knows that she cannot have children and eventually she tells Joe. He does not mind because he has two daughters from his first wife. They all start living together. Joe Pittman breaks horses for Colonel Dye, and he wants to move to a better place where he can earn more money. He starts looking for a new place, but Jane does not want to leave until she hears from Ned. Finally after a year, she gets an old letter from Ned. He is in Kansas helping relocate black people. A second letter informs Jane that Ned works on a farm and attends school at night. Jane reflects that Ned soon will finish school and become a teacher, before joining the Army and heading to Cuba in the war.

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