Gaines's story is meant as more than an entertainment; it is meant as a critique of the racial injustice he experienced as a boy made vivid again by a visit to Louisiana in 1968. Understanding "The Sky is Gray" requires that one not only understand something about the Louisiana of the 1930s and 1940s but also understand what was happening with regard to race in the United States during the 1960s, because the events of what later came to be called "the Civil Rights era" made a substantial and lasting impression on Gaines, one that can be seen not too far beneath the surface of "The Sky is Gray" in the person of the student and in the story's preoccupation with racial inequality.

While precisely dating the start of an era is difficult, most agree that the beginning of the Civil Rights era can be dated...