“The Black Ball” is a posthumous collection of four little-known short stories from the early career of renowned African American novelist Ralph Ellison. Set between the 1920s and 1940s, the stories use moments of racial awakening as an entry point to explore how Jim Crow segregation and white supremacist violence shaped Black life and American national identity in Ellison’s time.
In the first story, “Boy on a Train,” a little boy named James leaves Oklahoma City with his mother and his baby brother Lewis in 1924. They have to sit in the back of the segregated train, in the luggage compartment next to the engine. It’s uncomfortably hot, but soot will fly inside if they open the window. A fat white butcher groped Mama when she first boarded the train, but she knows that she can’t do anything about it: a white man’s word will always count for more than a Black woman’s. James and Lewis look out the window at the passing scenery: autumn leaves fall, wild horses gallop across the hills, and farmers lead their cows through cornfields. James remembers his caring, attentive, intellectual father (Daddy), who has recently passed away. Now, the family has to move to the only place where his mother can find work: the rural town of McAlester.
The train stops at a different small country town, and James notices local white men staring at him through the window. He doesn’t understand why white people are so hostile to his family, but he suspects it has something to do with their color. Later, he points out a passing grain silo, and Mama breaks into tears. She says she remembers passing the same silo when she and Daddy first migrated from the South to Oklahoma City to seek a better life. But now, Daddy is gone, and life is not much better than it used to be. She tells James that he will be the man of the house now, and he has to make sure the family sticks together. He promises to do so. Mama prays for God to help her family survive the hardship they will encounter. James decides that he will protect Mama by killing whatever is making her so sad, even if it’s God.
The next story, “Hymie’s Bull,” is also set on the American railroad. The story’s unnamed Black narrator explains how he left home in search of work during the Great Depression, only to end up freight hopping his way around the country, like so many other unemployed young men. He explains that the railroads hire brutal security guards called “bulls” to kick bums (freight hoppers) off the trains. They specifically target Black bums, often grievously injuring or even killing them. But sometimes, bums get to the bulls first. The narrator remembers how he saw a white bum named Hymie kill one of the bulls. Hymie had spent much of the day sitting on top of a train, sick and vomiting from a bad stew. In the evening, the narrator climbed atop the train to watch the sunset. He saw Hymie go to sleep, and then a bull approach and start beating him. Hymie pulled a knife out of his pocket, stabbed the bull in the chest and throat, pushed him off the train, and disappeared into the night. The next day, the other bulls wanted to lynch a Black bum in retaliation for the bull’s death. But the narrator narrowly escaped.
The title story, “The Black Ball,” focuses on one day in the life of a Black single father named John, who works as a janitor at a ritzy apartment building somewhere in the American southwest. In the morning, he cleans the building’s lobby, then rushes to his quarters above the garage to make breakfast for his four-year-old son. His son asks if he’s Black, because the gardener’s son, Jackie, is making fun of him. John says that he’s actually brown, but that the best thing to be is American. John returns to work, but a white stranger approaches him while he is polishing the brass door handles. John assumes that the stranger wants his job, because the manager, Mr. Berry, has been firing his few Black employees and replacing them with white people. But actually, the stranger is an organizer with a local union. He says he wants to help John and his coworkers win better wages and working conditions, but John thinks unions are only for white people. The man shows John his hands, which are covered in scars, and explains that a white mob attacked him back home in Alabama after he defended a Black friend against false rape charges. He invites John to an upcoming union meeting and leaves.
On his lunch break, John eats with his son, who plays with a toy truck and says that he wants to be a truck driver. John tries to read, but ends up looking out the window and taking a nap instead. His son goes out to play with his ball, and John warns him to stay in the back alley instead of going to the front lawn, where the white kids play. But John’s son doesn’t listen—when John wakes up from his nap, he finds his son in the front lawn, crying because “a big white boy” took his ball and threw it into Mr. Berry’s window. Then, Mr. Berry comes over, furious: the ball ruined one of his plants. He warns John that he will be “behind the black ball” (out of a job) if his son keeps playing on the lawn. Back inside, John’s son asks what Mr. Berry meant—after all, the ball is white. John muses that his son will spend his whole life playing with the black ball (learning to deal with racism), and he decides to go to the union meeting.
Finally, “In a Strange Country” follows Mr. Parker, a Black American soldier, on his first night in Wales during World War II. The story opens in a pub, where a Welshman named Mr. Catti brings Parker a drink. Parker is dizzy and has a black eye because, as soon as he arrived in Wales, he came across a group of white American soldiers—and they called him “a goddamn n[—]” and punched him in the face. In contrast, Catti is “genuinely and uncondescendingly polite” to Parker. He says that Welshmen love “Black Yanks,” and he invites Parker to a local singing club. Parker agrees, but he wonders whether Catti is playing some kind of trick on him. At the club, the manager greets Parker warmly, and the choir sings Welsh folk songs. Parker can’t understand them, but he finds them beautiful and moving. He realizes that Black Americans and the Welsh have a lot in common as subjugated peoples within larger nations (the U.S. and U.K.). He wishes that Black Americans could find the same kind of national pride and unity that the Welsh seem to have. He also realizes that white people have never treated him so well in his whole life, and he wishes he didn’t have to return home to the U.S. The choir sings the Welsh national anthem, then “God Save the King,” the “Internationale,” and finally, in Parker’s honor, “The Star Spangled Banner.” Parker feels a dizzying combination of confusion, guilt, and pride, and then he starts to sing. After the song, he’s completely speechless.
