The Confederate Battle Flag and Its Portrayal in Gaines's Work

The horrendous events in Charleston, SC, last week at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church cannot be erased from our collective consciousness. Following the attack on the church and the killing of nine innocent African American victims, debates over a continued symbol of hate and prejudice arose. That symbol, of course, is the Confederate Battle Flag which flew at full staff over the Confederate Soldier Monument near the State House. The pole lacks a pulley system, and in order to remove the flag, it has to be approved by two thirds of the state legislature. Approval by any part of the state legislature appears absurd, but two thirds means that nothing can be done to the flag in question unless sixty six percent of the elected officials in the legislature approve it. The flag stands for the South, yes, but it stands for the South that oppressed and kept others in chains to benefit its own avaricious desires. It stands for a South that labeled Africans and later African Americans as chattel, property that could be treated however the owner saw fit. It stands for a Jim Crow society that decided "separate but equal" accommodations for African and Anglo Americans. It stands for a reminder of a South that continually saw African Americans and others as inferior to themselves and strove to maintain its power through violence, intimidation, and coercion. 

For today's post, I just want to show a couple of examples where the Confederate Battle Flag appears in Gaines's works and the characters's reactions to it. Reading through Gaines's works, the flag flies above the courthouse in Bayonne, and various characters encounter it. In "The Sky Is Gray," the eight year old narrator James does not know what to make of the flag. As his mother, Octavia, walks him through the streets of the town, he stares up at the courthouse and sees the flag at the top. "We come up to the courthouse, and I see the flag waving there," James says, "This flag ain't like the one we got at school. This one here ain't got but a handful of stars. One at school got a big pile of stars--one for every state" (93). Even though James doesn't realize its meaning, he differentiates the flag from the United States flag that hangs in the classroom in the quarters. James does not comprehend that the flag represents hatred, oppression, and subjugation and flies as a symbol of what some wished still existed. This is James's only contact with the Confederate Battle Flag in "The Sky is Gray." 

Grant, in A Lesson before Dying, discusses the flag in more specific terms. From the very beginning of the novel, the segregation of African Americans and whites becomes evident. Speaking about Jefferson's trial, Grant comments that Miss Emma "never got up once to get water or go to the bathroom down in the basement" (3). When grant comes to the courthouse in Bayonne himself, he describes it by saying, "A statue of a Confederate soldier stood to the right of the walk that led up to the courthouse door. Above the head of the statue, national, state, and Confederate flags flew on long metal poles" (68-69). Grant understands what the Confederate flag represents because he has lived in its shadow everyday of his life. Like Miss Emma, he must go to the fountain and bathroom in the courthouse's basement, he must wait endlessly for Henri Pichot to speak with him, and he must endure other forms of subjugation as well. Grant knows these things, but he feels he does not have any power to change them. Through teaching Jefferson, and his own students, he works to rectify the situation and to escape the shadow casts by the flag that waves above Bayonne's courthouse. 

Earlier in the novel, Grant recalls leading the Pledge of Allegiance to the United States flag in his classroom in the quarters. There, the students stood and addressed the Stars and Stripes. "The flag," Grant recalled, "hung limp from a ten-foot bamboo pole in the corner of the white picket fence that surrounded the church" (emphasis added 33). The key words here are "hung limp." While the Confederate flag, and others, "flew" above the courthouse, indicating movement and agency, the flag hanging on the bamboo pole along the fence only hangs limply, not moving at all. Past the limp flag, Grant "could see smoke rising from the chimneys in the quarter, and beyond the houses and the chimneys [he] could hear the tractors harvesting sugarcane in the fields" (33). As the flag dangles, listlessly, on the pole, Grant sees beyond it to the people who occupy the quarters and to their impending displacement to agricultural expansion. In this instance, the flag appears powerless because it does not move, failing to provide power to those who pledge their allegiance to it.  

There are other instances where the Confederate Battle Flag appears in Gaines's works, but the ones discussed above are two of the main ones. Gaines does not delve into the historical context of the flag, he lets it wave above the courthouse as a symbol of what African Americans had to endure in the South before, during, and after the Civil War. He confronts the flag, and the past it represents, in his writing by showing that those who lived under its reign survived with dignity and power. Others, like Frank Laurent and Miss Jane's mistress, pleaded for it to remain. As Miss Jane's mistress watched the Confederate soldiers march away from her plantation, she cried, “Sweet, precious blood of the South; sweet precious blood of the South” (5).  She does not want her way of life to end, and those who argue that the Confederate Battle Flag represents a heritage of the South, as Lindsey Graham notes in the clip below, resemble her in some way. 

The clip is from John Oliver's Last Week Tonight where he discusses the flag and the debate surrounding its presence in South Carolina and the South in general.  What are your thoughts on this topic? Let us know in the comments below.    

Gaines, Ernest J. The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. New York: Bantam Books, 1972. Print.
Gaines, Ernest J. A Lesson before Dying. New York: Vintage Books, 1993. Print.
Gaines, Ernest J. "The Sky is Gray." Bloodline. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976. 83-117. Print.

The Jim Crow South in Welty's "A Worn Path" and Gaines' "The Sky is Gray"

In the previous post, I wrote about Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path" and Ernest Gaines' "The Sky is Gray." As mentioned, Gaines said that he had to read Welty's story first in order to write his own. For this post I will continue the exploration of these two texts in conjunction with one another. Specifically, I will examine the journeys that Old Phoenix and James both take to town. Throughout their excursions, both characters experience hardships and encounter racism on their way to a doctor's office and dentist's office respectively. 

As Phoenix makes her way through the countryside, she struggles to get to the doctor in Natchez. When the frozen path begins to go up a hill, she speaks to herself, saying, "Seem like there is chains about my feet time I get this far" (276). Welty's story oozes with symbolism, and Phoenix's statement here registers as symbolic. Phoenix can be seen as a symbol of African American struggle from slavery to the 1930s. Upon reaching the hill, she notices that she will be tired, as she always is at this point, and she specifically mentions that her feet feel like they are harnessed in "chains." The struggle against Jim Crow for African Americans in a racist society can be seen in Phoenix's comment. Immediately after she crests the mountain, Phoenix looks behind her to see where she came from the she begins her descent on the other side. However, her descent is not smooth either. When she reaches the bottom of the hill, her dress becomes ensnared in thorns. Trying to pull the dress free, it only become caught in other places. Phoenix tells the culprits of her captivity, "Thorns, you're doing your appointed work. Never want to let folks pass, no sir" (277). Whereas racism and oppression are implied in Gaines' story, they are symbolically portrayed in Welty's through Phoenix's reference to chains, her entanglement in thorns that will not let her go, and in her "trial" to get past the log over the creek. 

After resting, and being confronted with the apparition of a boy bringing her cake, Phoenix travels through fields of "dead trees" in a "withered cotton field" and "past cabins silver from weather" (278, 280). See Kevin Moberly's "Toward the North Star: Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path' and the Slave Narrative Tradition" for a discussion of previous criticism of Welty's story and its connection to James Olney's characteristics of slave narratives.   When Old Phoenix begins again, she comes across the white hunter, and her struggles against a society that subjugates her become real instead of just symbolic. She sees a nickel fall out of the hunter's pocket; to distract him so she can pick the nickel up, she sets the hunter's dog and a stray to fighting. The hunter leaves, and she picks up the nickel. Upon returning, the hunter, who does not know that Phoenix retrieved the nickel, levels his gun at her, asking, "Doesn't the gun scare you?" (283) Phoenix basically admits to taking the nickel, but the hunter doesn't realize it, and he lowers the gun and smiles, warning her to "take [his] advice and stay home, and nothing will happen to [her]" (283-284).  The hunter's confrontation, whether joking on not, shows the relationships between whites and blacks in the Jim Crow South. Even his warning to Phoenix displays that no matter how much she tries to climb the hill or get through the thorns that ensnare her, there will always be those that hold her back because of the color of her skin.

In "The Sky is Gray," Gaines does not overtly present Jim Crown racism. Instead, he subtly implies the segregation that exists in Bayonne. Eight-year-old James, getting on the bus, does not mention that it is segregated; instead, he simply states, "When I pass the little sign that say 'White' and 'Colored,' I start looking for a seat" (91). James only says this after the fact that whites sit in the front of the bus and blacks in the back, nothing more. Later, James and Octavia enter Bayonne and see "grass shooting right out of the sidewalk," bringing to mind that James is no longer in the quarters where he can move and go as he pleases without the ever-present fear of oppression. Upon entering Bayonne, James makes three references to segregation and racism. The first comes when the mother and son pass by a school. James sees the "white children playing in the yard" and then passes a cafe where people are eating while he is cold (93). Octavia tells him to keep his eyes forward, teaching him how to act in segregated Bayonne.  Continuing to walk, James bumps into a white man, and Octavia jerks him away. Finally, as they come upon the courthouse. James notices the flag. He comments, "This flag ain't like the one we got at school. This one here ain't got but a handful of stars. One at school got a big pile of stars-one for every state" (93). The flag, of course, is the Confederate Flag, a symbol of Southern hostility towards African Americans.

Both Gaines' and Welty's stories contain images of racism and oppression; each, however, presents segregation and struggle in different ways. Welty presents it through the use of symbols that Phoenix comes upon during her journey. Gaines implies Jim Crow segregation through the narration of an eight year old. There is more that could be said about these stories, especially when considering Phoenix and Octavia in relationship to one another as they show strength in their journeys to town. There could also be a discussion of the ways the nurses treat Phoenix and the scene in the dentist's office in "The Sky is Gray." What do you think about these two items? Make sure you leave a comment below.

There will not be any new blog posts over the next two weeks. Make sure you check back in on Tuesday January 6, 2015 because I will have a post on tips for teaching Gaines and information about the Second Annual Summer Teaching Institute at the Ernest J. Gaines Center.

Gaines, Ernest J. "The Sky is Gray." Bloodline. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976. 83-117. Print.
Welty, Eudora. "A Worn Path." A Curtain of Green, And Other Stories. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1979. 275-289. Print.

Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path" and Gaines' "The Sky is Gray"

Eudora Welty in 1941

Glancing through Ernest Gaines' works, one notices that most of his novels and short stories begin with a road. A character is moving down a hot, dusty road to somewhere, or a character is waiting on a road for something. Catherine Carmier begins with Brother pulling up to the store before he goes down the road to pick up Jackson. Of Love and Dust starts off with Jim Kelly sitting on the gallery watching a car drive fast down the quarters kicking up dust. A Gathering of Old Men opens with Snookum hearing Candy sitting in the road calling out for Aunt Glo. Virginia, at the beginning of In My Father's House, looks out of her house to see who is knocking on her door. Miss Jane starts her story by talking about the "Sesch Army" and their appearance at the plantation after their long walk on the road. I bring these items up, because one short story that Gaines has cited as an influence on him is Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path." In this post, I will speak briefly about the relationships between Welty's story and Gaines' "The Sky is Gray."

Just as Gaines has spoken of Hemingway, Turgenev, Faulkner, and others as influences, he has mentioned that Welty inspired him as well. Speaking with Elsa Saeta and Izora Skinner in 1991, they asked Gaines in he modeled his short story on Welty "A Worn Path." Gaines replied, "Not modeled on it, but I don't know that I would have been able to write 'Sky' had I not read Eudora Welty's 'A Worn Path'" (245). The main aspect that Gaines drew from Welty's story of Old Phoenix's trek to town to get medicine for her sick grandson is the "the journey." To Gaines, "[t]he journey is the thing: the journey of the old woman going to the doctor, going to town to get medicine for the kid. This is what I was going for--the journey. What does the journey mean besides going to town and coming back?" (245) Both stories contain a journey, and both, as I allude to earlier, start on a road.

Old Phoenix's journey in "A Worn Path" takes place in December on "a bright frozen day in the early morning" out in the country where "an old Negro woman with her hair tied in a red rag, [could be seen] coming along a path through the pinewoods" (275). James does not walk at the beginning of "The Sky is Gray," but he can be seen waiting on the side of the road in his "country" town waiting for the bus to take him and his mother to Bayonne. James says, "Go'n be coming in a few minutes. Coming round that bend down there full speed" (83). Later, we learn that the journey that James and Octavia take to Bayonne occurs on a day much like Old Phoenix's, cold and dreary. While the settings are similar and the time frame of both stories (one day) are similar, there are a couple of major stylistic differences between them.

For one, a third person narrator tells Old Phoenix's story, providing a separate voice to describe her journey to Natchez. We receive James' account of his journey to the dentist in Bayonne from his point of view. Allowing the reader to hear James' account of the journey from his point of view allows for a deeper understanding of his thoughts and actions. For example, it provides insight into his thoughts about manhood, how he feels about his mother, and his reactions to his first encounters in Bayonne. On the other hand, relating Old Phoenix's trip to Natchez from the third person point of view does not give the same insight. Readers do not see the the inner thoughts of her head unless she speaks. This creates a distance between the reader and Old Phoenix where as with James the reader feels more connected with James because he relays his thoughts and desires directly through his narration.

Stay tuned for the next post where I will discuss some other aspects of these stories.

Gaines, Ernest J. "The Sky is Gray." Bloodline. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976. 83-117. Print.
Saeta, Elsa and Izora Skinner. "Interview with Ernest Gaines." Conversations with Ernest Gaines. Ed. John Lowe. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1995. 241-252. Print.
Welty, Eudora. "A Worn Path." A Curtain of Green, And Other Stories. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Publishers, 1979. 275-289. Print.