Third Assignment

Quotation 1 from “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow”:
“She finished by telling me that I ought to be thankful to God as long as I lived that they didn’t kill me.”

Quotation 2 from “Sky is Gray”:
“If you was white, that’s something else; but we the wrong color.”

These two quotes show the mistreatment of African Americans prior to the civil rights movement. The first quote is from “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow” when Richard is in what he thought was a fun game. What started as a fun game with cinders ended with broken bottles versus cinders, and Richard receiving three stitches after a bottle hit him behind his ear by the “white folks” that he was in a war in. The quote shows how his mom wants him to understand his place in society, and that he is inferior to white folks. He should be grateful that he is still alive and that he should never get into a confrontation with white folks again.
The second quote is from the "Sky is Gray." This is from the scene when James and his mother are in a dentist office. They waited the whole day and it was about to close. This quote is from the nurse and it shows again the inferiority of blacks.