Black Boy: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Richard realizes that in order to save up enough money to leave Jackson, he must pretend to be docile and deferential to whites, and must do everything he can to hold a relatively high-paying job. He begins working as an assistant at a drugstore soda fountain, but in his attempt to get along with the white managers, he becomes awkward and slow, continually confused by how best to respond to outbursts of white anger. He is “let go” by the soda fountain, since they believe he is not up to the work.

At this point, it is the fall of 1925, and Richard does not go back to school for tenth grade. He takes a job as a mop-boy in the same hotel where Ned’s brother Bob was murdered—a hotel that is used as a brothel by white men and white prostitutes. Richard worries that he will not be able to keep himself out of trouble with the white patrons, but he befriends several of the other black workers, who are “smooth” around white people, and Richard slowly learns how to stay out of the way of the white guests. When one white man slaps a black female coworker of Richard’s on the backside, Richard attempts to be civil to the man, but later chastises the woman for allowing the man to treat her so poorly. The woman replies that Richard does not understand how things are at the hotel, and that he shouldn’t worry about such overtly racist and sexist white behaviors.

Richard also learns that many of his black coworkers, along with black men like Griggs who work in other places, steal frequently from their bosses in order to supplement their low wages. Richard has never stolen before, but he worries that he will save money so slowly if he does not steal that he will never be able to leave the South before something bad happens to him—before another run-in with white men causes him to lose his life. Richard considers whether he could steal a neighbor's gun—he knows where it's located—and earn money from stealing at his job. These two illegal acts could allow him to depart from Jackson and head North more quickly.

Richard considers his options and is promoted to bell boy at the hotel; he often goes into the rooms where white patrons and their white prostitutes are “entertaining,” but these patrons only tend to yell at Richard when he looks at them or reacts to them overtly. Otherwise, Richard is more or less invisible to the white guests at the hotel. One day, a fellow worker at the hotel tells Richard that a movie-house in Jackson owned by a Jewish businessman is looking for ticket-takers, and that this job would allow Richard to steal by reselling tickets and pocketing the difference in the house’s earnings. Richard decides this is his chance, and is given the job by the businessman, who sees that Richard has no criminal record of stealing.

Richard begins working and, one afternoon, is called to by a man who knows another female employee at the house. The man tells Richard that the owner will be out that day, and that they can put their plan into action reselling tickets. Richard is nervous to steal, but recognizes that this might be his best shot to make money quickly. With Richard and the female employee (named Tel), the man orchestrates the reselling of tickets, and at the end of the busy weekend night, Richard has made fifty dollars. He goes through this nerve-wracking process of theft the following weekend, and has saved 100 dollars, or roughly the amount he believed he needed to be able to flee northward.

Richard then steals the gun located in his neighbor’s (empty) house, and gathers two friends to help him steal cans of food from a local college’s pantry. Richard buys clothing and a suitcase, and announces to his family one night that he is leaving town for Memphis, and that he won’t be returning any time soon. His mother worries that he is leaving to avoid some crime he has committed, and Richard does not deny this explicitly. Instead, he tells his mother he loves her, apologizes for the difficulties they have shared living in Jackson, and rides in a “black-only” coach north to Memphis. At the end of the chapter, Wright reflects that he hated the feeling of theft, but considered it necessary to leave Jackson. He also says he never again stole for the remainder of his life.