The Bullies

Until I entered Jim Hill public school, I had had but one year of unbroken study; with the exception of
one year at the church school, each time I had begun a school term something happened to disrupt it.
Already my personality was lopsided; my knowledge of feeling was far greater than my knowledge of
fact. Though I was not aware of it, the next four years were to be the only opportunity for formal study
in my life.

The first school day presented the usual problem and I was emotionally prepared to meet it. Upon what
terms would I be allowed to remain upon the school grounds? With pencil and tablet, I walked
nonchalantly into the schoolyard, wearing a cheap, brand-new straw hat. I mingled with the boys,
hoping to pass unnoticed, but knowing that sooner or later I would be spotted for a newcomer. And
trouble came quickly. A black boy bounded past me, thumping my straw hat to the ground, and yelling:
“Straw katy!”
I picked up my hat and another boy ran past, slapping my hat even harder.
“Straw katy!”

Again I picked up my hat and waited. The cry spread. Boys gathered around, pointing, chanting:
“Straw katy! Straw katy!”

I did not feel that I had been really challenged so far; no particular boy had stood his ground and
taunted me. I was hoping that the teasing would cease, and tomorrow I would leave my straw hat at
home. But the boy who had begun the game came close.

“Mama bought me a straw hat,” he sneered.

“Watch what you’re saying,” I warned him.
“Oh, look! He talks!” the boy said.
The crowd howled with laughter, waiting, hoping.
“Where you from?” the boy asked me.
“None of your business,” I said.
“Now, look, don’t you go and get sassy, or I’ll cut you down,” he said.
“I’ll say what I please,” I said.
The boy picked up a tiny rock and put it on his shoulder and walked close again. “Knock it off,” he invited
me.

I hesitated for a moment, then acted; I brushed the rock from his shoulder and ducked and grabbed him
about the legs and dumped him to the ground. A volcano of screams erupted from the crowd. I jumped
upon the fallen boy and started pounding him. Then I was jerked up. Another boy had begun to fight
me. My straw hat had been crushed and forgotten.
“Don’t you hit my brother!” the new boy yelled.
“Two fighting one ain’t fair!” I yelled.

Both of them now closed in on me. A blow landed on the back of my head. I turned and saw a brick
rolling away and I felt blood oozing down my back. I looked around and saw several brickbats scattered
about. I scooped up a handful. The two boys backed away. I took aim as they circled me; I made a
motion as if to throw and one of the boys turned and ran. I let go with the brick and caught him in the
middle of his back. He screamed. I chased the other halfway around the schoolyard. The boys howled
their delight; they crowded around me, telling me that I had fought with two bullies. Then suddenly the
crowd quieted and parted. I saw a woman teacher bearing down upon me. I dabbed at the blood on my
neck.
“Was it you who threw that brick?” she asked.
“Two boys were fighting me,” I told her.
“Come,” she said, taking my hand.
I entered school escorted by the teacher, under arrest. I was taken to a room and confronted with the
two brothers.
“Are these the boys?” she asked.
“Both of ’em fought me,” I said. “I had to fight back.”
“He hit me first!” one brother yelled. “You’re lying!” I yelled back. “Don’t you use that language in here,”
the teacher said. “But they’re not telling the truth,” I said. “I’m new here and they tore up my hat.”
“He hit me first,” the boy said again.
I reached around the teacher, who stood between us, and smacked the boy. He screamed and started at
me. The teacher grabbed us.
“The very idea of you!” the teacher shouted at me. “You are trying to fight right in school! What’s the
matter with you?”
“He’s not telling the truth,” I maintained.
She ordered me to sit down; I did, but kept my eyes on the two brothers. The teacher dragged them out
of the room and I sat until she returned.
“I’m in a good mind not to let you off this time,” she said.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I said.
“I know. But you hit one of those boys right in here,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”

She asked me my name and sent me to a room. For a reason I could not understand, I was assigned to
the fifth grade. Would they detect that I did not belong there? I sat and waited. When I was asked my
age I called it out and was accepted.
Granny and Addie decide that Richard is lost to the world and finally give up the
effort to save his soul. This means that the two women grow cold and hostile toward
him, but it also means that he can leave Addie’s religious school for a public school.
Granny refuses to pay for Richard’s public school textbooks because she considers
them worldly.
On the first day of school, Richard fights two boys simultaneously after one of them
knocks his straw hat off his head. As usual, he proves himself and gains acceptance
through fighting. Within two weeks, Richard advances from the fifth grade to the
sixth. Richard is unable to find a job that does not require him to work on Saturday, a
day Granny refuses to allow him to work for religious reasons. Richard’s lack of
income prevents him from participating in the social life of his classmates, which
revolves around buying snacks at the corner store. He hides his poverty from his
peers, all the while yearning to be a part of their group, wanting to eat with them and
to get to know them intimately.

A classmate tells Richard that he sells newspapers to make money and suggests
that Richard do the same. The classmate has never read the Chicago-printed paper
itself, but he likes the stories in the magazine supplement that comes with it. Richard
orders a batch of the papers and becomes entranced by the stories his friend has
told him about. He makes some money selling these papers for a while, as Granny
has permitted him the job because it does not require him to sell on Saturdays.

One day, one of Richard’s black customers takes him aside and asks him if he really
is aware of what he is selling. He shows Richard that the paper, which Richard still
has never read, is filled with propaganda from the Ku Klux Klan, the vicious white
supremacist group. Richard is shocked, knowing that the paper is printed in
Chicago, a place, he has heard, where blacks are supposedly equal to whites.
Richard immediately stops selling the paper. When the father of Richard’s classmate
discovers the content of the paper, he forbids his son to sell it as well. Out of mutual
shame, Richard and his classmate never discuss why they stopped selling the
paper. Without money from his job, Richard goes hungry yet again.

One day, while Addie and Granny endlessly debate details of religious doctrine,
Richard makes an offhand comment that the women deem blasphemous. Granny
vigorously lunges to slap Richard, but he ducks the blow, and Granny loses her
balance, falling off the porch and injuring her back. Later, Richard wants to ask how
Granny is doing, but he cannot let his guard down in front of Addie. Addie confronts
him in the hallway and tries to beat him. Once again, Richard fends off the blows,
crying hysterically and brandishing a knife from the kitchen. Addie vows that she will
give him his due beating one night. Consequently, Richard sleeps with a knife under
his pillow for the next month. Wright makes the observation that these constant
religious disputes made his family’s household even more quarrelsome and violent
than the household of a gangster or burglar.

Richard then takes a job writing for Brother Mance, an illiterate insurance salesman
who lives next door. The job entails journeys to plantations, which prove to be eye-
opening experiences for Richard, who is alarmed to see the universal poverty,
isolation, and ignorance of Southern black sharecroppers. Richard notes the
consistently shy nature of the sharecroppers’ children; compared to them, he feels
like a civilized man from the big city.

The freedom that Richard has achieved by the age of twelve is unusual. It is a freedom of many
facets. He no longer receives orders from Granny and Addie; they have given up on him. At the
same time, this freedom from their criticism is also a freedom from their interest in him and is
perhaps an example of how the lack of tenderness he sees between black people actually
evolves. But, if Addie and Granny have no concern for Richard, he too is free of any concern for
them. The unspoken pact between them means that they will no longer care about each other.
And for one who is already an outsider, it is a relief not to be forced to show affection or
demonstrate loyalty. This is, in itself, a form of freedom.

Since most children are rebellious and individualistic, it can be assumed that this form of
freedom was achieved by many other black boys besides Richard. What slavery and its
aftermath of fear had done was to make parents and grandparents protect those children they
could repress and reject those they couldn't. To this extent, Richard was probably typical. He
was sent out into the world to fend for himself without much support at home.

At twelve years old, Richard has had only one full year of school, but when he reenters school,
he is advanced to the sixth grade. Granny's reaction is to see Richard as more peculiar than
ever. Here we see him relating to the outside world on its own terms. He is a complete individual
both intellectually curious and capable of waging physical warfare. His qualifications are fine for
any gang, but his aspirations are destined to be squelched.

Richard's friends work on the weekends, but Granny forbids him to do so, which means he can't
join his friends during lunch hour shopping sprees. Knowing that Granny won't let him out after
he has gone home, he forfeits meals in order to explore his environment. He is learning what his
priorities are now. By necessity, he is educating himself, and this involves extensive choices,
choices that are usually imposed by others.

One of the most crucial of these choices comes with his experience selling newspapers. The job
is highly rewarding: it gives him a chance to earn money and a chance to read adventure stories
in the supplement section of the paper. His imagination is on fire; he loves to read. But then
comes the awful discovery that the newspaper's publishers are racist. Granny and Addie have
been giving him many reasons for thinking himself wicked. He has rejected them all. With this
discovery, he judges himself on his own terms. With all the benefits the job gives him, it is
morally wrong for him to continue it.

In the summer, he takes a job that he enjoys as an assistant to an insurance salesman. They
travel into the Delta country and to plantations where Richard measures himself against the
poor, illiterate children there. They look up to him as one who is "city-fied," successful, and
admirable. It's a new experience for him to be treated as a model for others. And for once he
gets plenty to eat. He wants to continue the job, but his employer dies another in a series of
letdowns.

With Richard's grandfather's death, we have a portrait of practically an invisible man in the
house. It is as if he assumes substance in Richard's life only when he is dying. He takes on a
historical rather than a personal significance, for he served in the Union Army and, disabled,
spent the remainder of his life expecting the government to send him the pension he deserved.
His brief life history sums up the history of black Americans. Any soldier is a slave. And a black
soldier is a slave's slave. Once again Richard is conscious of whites as an abstract force of evil.

Outside of the writers whom Richard comes to admire, there are no male models in his life. His
grandfather has remained all but invisible. Those men he has had contact with have repelled
him. He hates their failure to rebel when they are the potential righters of wrong. The life of his
grandfather only affirms the growing impression he has of blacks as unconscious coconspirators
in a racist system. In his later work, Wright seems to be saying that every act short of killing is
an act of cowardice on the part of a black man. And perhaps if his grandfather had gone out and
shot a white man in revenge for his tragic life, Richard would have had one male model to look
up to. Instead, he witnesses one frustration after another, and it all contributes to his growing
rage.

Richard himself has learned to rebel. His mother trained him to defend himself in the streets by
locking the door on him. In this chapter, we see that the act of rebellion cannot be separated
from one's life style. It is natural for Richard to resist his grandmother when her commands are
irrational. It doesn't involve thought or planning. When he threatens to leave her house if she
doesn't allow him to work, he means it. He is not playing on her sympathies. He is a rebel, and
so Granny gives in. For this successful act of resistance, he receives a kiss from his mother
who, with that one gesture, sums up the tragic losses of her own life.
Black Boy - Richard Wright .pdf - PDF Archive

No longer set apart for being sinful, I felt that I could breathe again, live again, that I had been released
from a prison. The cosmic images of dread were now gone and the external world became a reality,
quivering daily before me. Instead of brooding and trying foolishly to pray, I could run and roam, mingle
with boys and girls, feel at home with people, share a little of life in common with others, satisfy my
hunger to be and live. Granny and Aunt Addie changed toward me, giving me up for lost; they told me
that they were dead to the world, and those of their blood who lived in that world were therefore dead
to them. From urgent solicitude they dropped to coldness and hostility. Only my mother, who had in the
meantime recovered somewhat, maintained her interest in me, urging me to study hard and make up
for squandered time. Freedom brought problems; I needed textbooks and had to wait for months to
obtain them. Granny said that she would not buy worldly books for me. My clothes were a despair. So
hostile did Granny and Aunt Addie become that they ordered me to wash and iron my own clothes.
Eating was still skimpy, but I had now adjusted myself to the starch, lard, and greens diet. I went to
school, feeling that my life depended not so much upon learning as upon getting into another world of
people.