The Black Ball Themes

The Black Ball collects four of Ralph Ellison’s little-known early short stories. In “Boy on a Train,” a young boy (James) migrates out of Oklahoma City on a segregated train after his father’s death with his baby brother (Lewis) and his mother. In “Hymie’s Bull,” an unnamed Black narrator who lives as a bum, riding freight trains around the U.S. during the Great Depression, tells the reader about watching…

All four stories in The Black Ball show how, throughout most of the 20th century, white Americans used racist violence as a tool to terrorize Black people into accepting a subservient position in society. First, Ralph Ellison shows how Black Americans live in an atmosphere of constant threat. And second, he shows how Black people adapt to this situation by learning to accept racial hierarchy, avoid confrontation, and take responsibility for injustices that white people…

Two of the stories in The Black Ball—“The Black Ball” and “Boy on a Train”—feature children who begin to learn about the ugly truth of American racism while their parents struggle to decide whether and how to reveal it to them. In “Boy on a Train,” young James’s Daddy has died, and James’s mother (Mama) has to move him and his baby brother Lewis to a rural town, which is the…