Part I, Chapter 4, Pud, Don't Step on My Reputation Summary and Analysis

On November 27th, 1908, a poor black sharecropper, William Herrin, an in-law of the Boskets, was hanged. He and Pud were members of a new generation of "trouble-making" blacks the whites called "the New Negro," as they were born after slavery. The whites were horrified that they were not deferential to them. Herrin was hanged because he killed his boss for cheating him out of his wages and disrespecting him.

Herrin's hanging was a sign of crisis in the 1890s and early 1900s, when Pud grew up. It was caused by a severe economic recession when South Carolina joined the economy and farm prices fell fast. Race relations completely deteriorated; whites started to disenfranchise the few remaining black voters and created the Jim Crow laws and...