Black Boy Review Chapter 11

Review Chapter 10 Richard participates in the ticket scam and steals enough to pay for his train ticket north He rides in the Jim Crow train car. Think back to when he didn’t understand segregation on the train with his mother earlier, and how he now understands what it means to be treated as though he is not a human being.

“I arrived in Memphis on a cold November Sunday morning, in 1925” (208)

Beale Street (this picture is actually from 1939)

Mrs. Moss Richard thinks she is a whore or is running a whorehouse She is a simple, church-going woman whose only goal in life seems to be to get her daughter married Husband is a baker They rent rooms in their house

Important quotes about Mrs. Moss “Boy, your heart’s like an open book” (210) “I had met the warmest, friendliest person I had ever known” (210) “Bess is going to be married soon” (211 remember that Bess doesn’t have a suitor) “’I say gals oughta marry young… Now, if Bess found a nice young man like you, Richard…” (210)

Bess Moss 17, but in the 5 th grade “young, simple, sweet, and brown” (211) “naïve simplicity” (213) Naïve – lacking experience, judgment, wisdom Reread page 213 and the conversation Bess and Richard have about school. What is his view? What is hers? Why would that be a problem?

More on Bess and her mother “Peasant mentality” (214) “simple unaffected trust” (214) They like Richard because he is clearly educated, motivated, and able to think. Why would this be necessary for Bess? Richard mentions that “it would be easy to have sex relations with” Bess (217). Why doesn’t he?

The other boy and the last line of the chapter What happens with the other boy? Explain the quote: “Last night I had found a naïve girl. This morning I had been a naïve boy” (222).