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The morning after the decision, the sun rose and everything looked the same. Elwood asked his grandmother when Negroes were going to start staying at the Richmond, and she said it’s one thing to tell someone to do what’s right and another thing for them to do it. . . Sooner or later, though, the door would swing wide to reveal a brown face. . . He was sure of it.
In Chapter 2, soon after the Supreme Court decision on Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court ruled that schools were not allowed to segregate white and Black students, Elwood starts looking for signs of change. His hope is to one day see a Black person dining at the Richmond hotel where his grandmother Harriet works (but isn’t allowed to stay). The events of the Civil Rights Movement are the motivating force behind Elwood’s optimism and his hope for a better future is grounded in the real-life events of this time. His grandmother is more realistic, and she reminds Elwood that things won’t change immediately, and they might not even change much over time. The notion that people don’t do the right thing just because you tell them to is an important idea since Elwood encounters cruel, racist, and illegal treatment during his time at Nickel Academy.
He hadn’t marched on the Florida Theatre in defense of his rights or those of the black race of which he was a part; he had marched for everyone’s rights, even those who shouted him down. My struggle is your struggle, your burden is my burden.
In Chapter 3, Elwood explores the idea that the people who want to keep the Florida Theater segregated are not simply prejudiced but ill-informed. Because of this, Elwood explains, he marches for everyone. In addition, Elwood has decided that he must forgive the people that seek to shout him down and oppress him. These viewpoints promote unity and are something Elwood learned from Martin Luther King, Jr. and his participation in the Civil Rights Movement. Here, in meeting Mr. Hill and the students he marches with, Elwood also finds camaraderie and connection within the movement. Mr. Hill and the other students are some of the only people he’s met who not only are against injustice but actively stand up to try and stop it. What he’s learned from them, along with the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., is something Elwood draws strength from later in the story.
King described agape as a divine love operating in the heart of man. A selfless love, an incandescent love, the highest there is. He called his Negro audience to cultivate that pure love for their oppressors, that it might carry them to the other side of the struggle.
In Chapter 14, Elwood recalls reading a Martin Luther King, Jr. speech from Cornell College in The Chicago Defender newspaper. In the speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. calls upon Black people to reflect love back to the people that choose to harm them, to reflect love back to their oppressors. Elwood tries his hardest to reflect love back to his oppressors at Nickel. But even Elwood must admit that this is nearly impossible to accomplish. Elwood uses these words as well as the reality of his situation as motivation to start writing down “everything,” meaning all the corruption that occurs during Community Service and at Nickel in general. In doing so he’s facing his oppressors head on, and he believes that when people are looking at the truth, they must serve justice.
