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 inflict upon them. Racist violence lurks in the background of all four stories in this book. The first story starts after a white butcher gropes James’s mother on the train, and the last one begins after Mr. Parker meets a group of white American fellow soldiers in Wales—and they greet him by calling him the N-word and punching him in the face. In “Hymie’s Bull,” the narrator explains how railroad bulls (security guards) specifically target Black bums (freight train hoppers) with sadistic violence. (Whenever anyone of any race attacks a bull, he explains, the bulls “make some black boy pay for it.”) In all these cases, the protagonists are not surprised when white people attack them—they are used to it, because in 20th-century American society, white violence against Black people was simply the norm.
Ellison also shows how Black people learned to adapt to this norm and avoid conflict at all costs, because they knew that practically anyone with power—including their bosses, the police, and the government—would inevitably blame them. This is clearest of all in “The Black Ball,” when the building manager Mr. Berry blames John’s son for throwing a ball into his office—even though a white boy actually did it. Still, John takes the blame and resolves to work even harder in order to appease Mr. Berry and keep his job. Though John’s son is too young to understand, John tells him that young Black people must eventually start “learning the rules of the game.” Of course, “the game” is the way that Black people have to accept injustice and act subservient to white people in order to survive in a racist society. Playing “the game” is just a fact of Black life in the 20th century—and as John puts it, his son will have no choice but to “play until he [grows] sick of playing.”
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Racial Violence and Injustice ThemeTracker
Racial Violence and Injustice Quotes in The Black Ball
The butcher had tried to touch her breasts when she and the boys first came into the car, and she had spat in his face and told him to keep his dirty hands where they belonged. The butcher had turned red and gone hurriedly out of the car, his baskets swinging violently on his arms. She hated him. Why couldn’t a Negro woman travel with her two boys without being molested?
The countryside was bright gold with Indian summer. Way across a field, a boy was leading a cow by a rope and a dog was barking at the cow’s feet. It was a nice dog, the boy on the train thought, a collie.
He closed his eyes tight, trying to see the picture of Daddy. He must never forget how Daddy looked. He would look like that himself when he grew up: tall and kind and always joking and reading books. … Well, just wait; when he got big and carried Mama and Lewis back to Oklahoma City everybody would see how well he took care of Mama, and she would say, “See, these are my two boys,” and would be very proud. And everybody would say, “See, aren’t Mrs. Weaver’s boys two fine men?” That was the way it would be.
“You understand, son. I want you to remember. You must, you’ve got to understand.”
“Go with us and keep us, Lord. Then it was me and him, Lord; now it’s me and his children. And I’m thankful, Lord. You saw fit to take him, Lord, and it’s well with my soul in Thy name. I was happy, Lord; life was like a mockingbird a-singing. And all I ask now is to stay with these children, to raise them and protect them, Lord, till they’re old enough to go their way. Make them strong and unafraid, Lord. Give them strength to meet this world. Make them brave to go where things is better for our people, Lord.…”
James wanted to cry, but, vaguely, he felt something should be punished for making Mama cry. Something cruel had made her cry. He felt the tightness in his throat becoming anger. If he only knew what it was, he would fix it; he would kill this mean thing that made Mama feel so bad. It must have been awful because Mama was strong and brave and even killed mice when the white woman she used to work for only raised her dress and squealed like a girl, afraid of them. If he only knew what it was … Was it God?
Yes, I’ll kill it. I’ll make it cry. Even if it’s God, I’ll make God cry, he thought. I’ll kill Him; I’ll kill God and not be sorry!
There were many advertising signs in the fields they were rolling past. All the signs told about the same things for sale. One sign showed a big red bull and read BULL DURHAM.
“Moo-oo,” the baby said.
Bulls are pretty bad people to meet if you're a bum. They have head-whipping down to a science and they're always ready to go into action. They know all the places to hit to change a bone into jelly, and they seem to feel just the place to kick you to make your backbone feel like it's going to fold up like the old collapsible drinking cups we used when we were kids. Once a bull hit me across the bridge of my nose and I felt like I was coming apart like a cigarette floating in a urinal. They can hit you on your head and bust your shoes.
Now when you hear that we're the only bums that carry knives you can just put that down as bull talk because what I'm fixing to tell you about was done by an ofay bum named Hymie from Brooklyn.
I stood there on top listening, bent slightly forward to keep my balance like a guy skiing, and thought of my mother, I had left her two months before, not even knowing that I would ever hop freights. Poor Mama, she had tried hard to keep my brother and me at home, but she fed us too long alone, and we were getting much too grown-up to let her do it any longer, so we left home looking for jobs.
Hymie pulled the knife around from ear to ear in the bull’s throat; then he stabbed him and pushed him off the top of the car. The bull paused a second in the air like a kid diving off a trestle into a river, then hit the cinders below. Something was warm on my face, and I found that some of the bull’s blood had blown back like spray when a freight stops to take on water from a tank.
The next day about dusk we were pulling into the yards at Montgomery, Alabama, miles down the line, and got the scare of our lives. […] All at once we heard someone hollering, and when we ran up to the front of the freight, there were two bulls, a long one and a short one, fanning heads with their gun barrels. They were making everybody line up so they could see us better. The sky was cloudy and very black. We knew Hymie’s bull had been found and some black boy had to go. But luck must've been with us this time […] we broke and ran between some cars on around to try to catch the freight pulling out at the other end of the yards. We made it.
There must be no flaws this morning. Two fellows who worked at the building across the street had already been dismissed because whites had demanded their jobs, and with the boy at that age needing special foods and me planning to enter school again next term, I couldn’t afford to allow something like that out on the sidewalk to spoil my chances.
Why, I thought, doesn’t he go on in and ask for the job? Why bother me? Why tempt me to choke him? Doesn’t he know we aren’t afraid to fight his kind out this way?
“Not used to anything like that, are you?”
“Not used to what?”
A little more from this guy and I would see red.
“Fellow like me offering a fellow like you something besides a rope.”
“All right now,” I told him. “You stay in the back out of everybody’s way, and you mustn’t ask anyone a lot of questions.”
“Well, if I ever see him around here again, you’re going to find yourself behind the black ball. Now get him on round to the back and then come up here and clean up this mess he’s made.”
“Will I play with the black ball, Daddy?”
“In time son,” I said. “In time.”
He had already played with the ball; that he would discover later. He was learning the rules of the game already, but he didn’t know it. Yes, he would play with the ball. Indeed, poor little rascal, he would play until he grew sick of playing. My, yes, the old ball game. But I’d begin telling him the rules later.
My hand was still burning from the scratch as I dragged the hose out to water the lawn, and looking down at the iodine stain, I thought of the fellow’s fried hands, and felt in my pocket to make sure I still had the card he had given me. Maybe there was a color other than white on the old ball.
Moving along the road in the dark he had planned to stay ashore all night, and in the morning he would see the country with fresh eyes, like those with which the Pilgrims had seen the New World. That hadn’t seemed so silly then—not until the soldiers bunched at the curb had seemed to spring out of the darkness. Someone had cried, “Jesus H. Christ,” and he had thought, He’s from home, and grinned and apologized into the light they flashed in his eyes. He had felt the blow coming when they yelled, “It’s a goddamn nigger,” but it struck him anyway.
