The Absurdity of Racial Segregation

From the start of the novel, black and white characters live and work side by side. Ketty, a black woman, takes care of Elma, a white girl, a situation not at all uncommon in the American South. And yet, the black characters lack basic civil rights for no reason besides the color of their skin. While Cotton County and Georgia had legal segregation, the mixing of black and white families was inevitable, and perhaps even more likely than more urban areas in the Northeast, where black people were more likely to live in ghettos and work different jobs. In Cotton County, black people and white people toiled alongside each other in the fields -- even if white people were treated markedly better -- and lived in the same houses, often because black people worked for wealthy white people. For example, in the...