Black Boy: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Granny and Addie give up on converting Richard to Christianity, and Richard settles into an uneasy truce with them, as his mother recovers enough at least to encourage Richard in his studies from her bed. Richard enrolls in the local public school and is placed in the fifth grade, despite his age (he is roughly thirteen). He is soon promoted to sixth grade, on account of his reading and writing abilities. Richard again defends himself in front of the other children in the schoolyard, who taunt him for his new hat on the first day of classes. After fighting two of them, he is taken into the office by a teacher, where he says he had to stand his ground. The teacher grudgingly sends him off to join the other students.

Granny and Addie will not give Richard money for “earthly books,” meaning anything that is not the Bible, and they continue to feed him on a diet of mostly greens and mush, with very little for lunch on school days. Richard begs Granny that he be able to work on Saturdays—which Granny considers the Sabbath—in order to buy food for himself to eat during school lunch, but Granny forbids this, saying that the Sabbath is for rest only, and even if Richard is not religious, he will follow the house’s religious rules.

Richard finds a young boy in his sixth-grade class who is selling newspapers with a “magazine supplement” in the back, serializing Riders of the Purple Sage, an adventure story. Richard is enticed by the prospect of reading this serial each week and of making some money to buy lunch, and so secures a subscription to the paper and begins selling the papers throughout the black neighborhoods of Jackson. He is able to do so, in part, because Granny permits work on non-Sabbath days, and because she cannot read, so she does not know what the paper and supplement are about. Richard does not read the paper either, only the stories in the back, and he is pulled aside one day by a black man, a carpenter, who tells Richard that the paper is an organ of the KKK, and that it spouts only Klan doctrine, including racist caricatures and rumors about African Americans.

Richard is appalled, and vows to the man never to sell the papers again; his friend, too, stops selling them, although the boys are too embarrassed to discuss with each other the contents of the papers they were so eager to share with the world. The carpenter tells Richard that people in the neighborhood assumed that Richard was simply unaware of the material he was selling, but Richard is nonetheless ashamed. Richard works hard that year in school, and reads whatever dime-store novels he can get his hands on in his spare time. As summer begins, however, Granny still will not permit him to work a job that meets on the Sabbath. Because Richard can find no other kind of employment, he is mostly idle.

One summer day, Richard is sitting on the porch steps with Granny, Addie, and mother. Granny and Addie are arguing about “religious doctrine,” as they often do, and Richard is mostly silent. When a point strikes Richard as interesting, he chimes in, only to be swiped at by Granny, who often hits Richard when he is “bold” enough to speak without being spoken to. Richard dodges Granny’s blow, however, and the force of her swipe causes her to tumble forward and hurt her back.

Addie goes inside, where Richard has run to his room out of fear, and yells at Richard, saying that he has hurt Granny, that he is a fool and does the devil’s work. Richard responds that he was only attempting to protect himself, and when Addie continues to yell at him, Richard says he will sleep with a knife under his pillow in case Addie ever comes into his room to chastise him or beat him. Addie then leaves, and Wright remarks that though their house was “religious,” he has never found a more violent or disputatious place, a home so bereft of love and kindness.

Richard finally finds a job that summer working as a secretary for an insurance salesman named Brother Mance, who cannot read, and who goes about the plantations outside Jackson to sell insurance policies to poor black families. Richard, in seeing these families, is ashamed at his own roots—he, too, was born on a plantation. He wonders what is to become of large segments of the Southern black population, who are too poor to gain an education and to move away from the difficult conditions of plantation life. The job is somewhat rewarding work, though, and Richard is sad when Brother Mance dies soon thereafter, as the insurance company will not allow a minor to continue in Mance’s place selling policies. Richard returns to school in the fall and starts the seventh grade—he still reads a great deal in his spare time, and is still often quite hungry.

Richard comes to the kitchen table one day that fall and learns that Grandpa is very sick—that, as Granny puts it, he is now in his “final illness,” although Grandpa has been sick for many years, on account of a wound suffered during the Civil War. Richard recounts that his Grandpa’s name was mis-transcribed at the end of the war as Richard Vinson, not Richard Wilson (Grandpa thought this had been done on purpose by racist bureaucrats in the War Office); therefore, Grandpa never received his military pension, though he fought for the Union with great bravery, and maintained a lifelong hatred of the Confederate States.

Richard goes upstairs to say “goodbye” to his grandfather, but when he asks Granny about the words Grandpa mumbles to him one his deathbed, Granny slaps him, tells him to be quiet when “the angel of death is in the house,” and sends Richard out to the far edge of town to fetch Tom, Grandpa’s son, to tell him of Grandpa’s death. Tom yells at Richard for announcing his father’s death so brusquely, then makes Richard walk back home alone. After this episode, Wright remarks to himself “that he can never seem to do what people expect of him.”

Granny does not allow Richard to attend Grandpa’s funeral, but Richard does not mind too much, and he notes that life continues more or less as usual after Grandpa’s death. One day late into Richard’s seventh-grade school year, however, Richard finally confronts Granny, begging her only to let him work on the Sabbath so that he can have money to buy “long pants” (since only children wear the shorts Richard has been accustomed to wearing for years). Granny says that Richard will go to hell for doing this, but when Richard threatens to leave school and the house altogether, Granny relents, and Richard is permitted to work on Saturdays. When Richard tells his mother this, she is proud of him for standing up to Granny and Addie.