Racial issues are discussed in Be Ever Hopeful, Hannalee, mostly in its last few chapters. Hannalee has met and begun to make friends with a black girl her own age named Delie. Delie works for a hotel across the street from where Hannalee works in the fabric store.

One day, Hannalee sees some boys throw dirt on some of Delie's freshly cleaned linens that have been hung out to dry behind the hotel. Hannalee helps chase them away, and a bond begins to form between the girls, although Delie is very shy. Her shyness is eventually explained. She is a freed slave who dislikes former slave owners and Confederate soldiers. When her old master and his son ask to see her before she begins a journey back to Atlanta, she pointedly snubs them: "The work I do is a dang sight harder," she says to Henry...