Historical Context

The term segregation refers to the systematic separation of facilities and institutions for people of color. The belief that white people and Black people did not have the capacity to co-exist was not necessarily new at the turn of the twentieth century. However, in 1896 the United States Supreme Court judged segregation legal with a decision on the Plessy v. Ferguson case that came out of Louisiana. This meant that education, housing, entertainment, transportation, and even restrooms could be segregated so long as they were "separate but equal."

The "separate but equal" doctrine failed to live up to its name. Facilities, such as schools, were available—separately—for people of color. However, they were by no means equal. People of color, especially in the South, were subjected to unacceptable conditions. By and large, they were forced to work in specific industries, especially manual and menial labor, leaving them to continue the plantation lifestyle of working the fields. The legalized separation of races in America bred more racism, ushering in a new regime of white supremacy after slavery. The disconnection of races allowed white people to feel superior by treating people of color as inferior. When segregation was ruled constitutional through Plessy v. Ferguson, the era was marked. Laws enforcing segregation came to be known as Jim Crow Laws, after a derogatory name for Black people. In all aspects of public life, Black people were excluded from white American society and forced into their own supposedly equal version. 

In 1954, Brown v. Board of Education reversed the decision on Plessy v. Ferguson, arguing that separate by definition could not be equal. This was a step in the right direction for Black America, but it was by no means an end to racism. In recent years, the nation has seen how discrimination associated with Jim Crow laws persists in the form of informal segregation and police brutality. Contemporary artist Dread Scott made this point visible by flying a flag proclaiming “a man was lynched by police yesterday” with reference to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People flag flown every time a lynching occurred. 

Links to A Lesson

This historical reality of segregation is represented in A Lesson Before Dying. The novel starts in the fall of 1948, when Jim Crow was alive and well in Louisiana. Segregation in the novel works on a few different levels. The most pervasive instances of segregation relate to place, or setting. There are two different sections of Bayonne: what the characters refer to as "front of town" is where the white facilities reside, while black facilities reside "back of town." The only time Grant visits "front of town" is when he goes to the courthouse to see Jefferson and once when he buys a radio. Otherwise, he remains "back of town" where Vivian lives and works, and where the Rainbow Club is located. The novel represents not only a historical reality in which white and black spaces are kept separate from one another, but it also provides a fictional discourse between the black and white character interactions. 

Black characters in the novel must endure a social, rather than strictly legal, form of segregation in which not only are they forced to live separate lives in a literal sense, but they must also adhere to the white ego and mind their place in the racial hierarchy. We see Grant struggle to keep his place throughout the novel. For example, when he drops off a radio for Jefferson, Sheriff Guidry asks him if it has "batries" (177). Grant almost responds with the standard pronunciation, "batteries," but has to remind himself not to offend the sheriff by appearing educated. Of course, Grant is educated, which makes him question his place in his own community and causes tension for him among white society. Although he is better educated than many of the white characters he encounters, he must behave as an uneducated man to appease the white worldview which insists on Black inferiority. This has connections to modern code switching in which people of color feel the need to speak differently depending on the social context.

Segregation is also shown to be prevalent in the novel when Miss Emma has to ask a special favor for Grant to visit Jefferson in prison. Because of her service to the Pichot family over the years, they help make the arrangements. Even still, however, Grant has to subject himself to the interrogations of Sheriff Guidry before being allowed to enter the white-controlled space of the prison. As a white-controlled space that jails Black people, the prison serves as an adjunct to segregation by giving the state the power to decide where people are allowed to go largely based on skin color. The novel depicts those limitations from the perspective of Grant, ostensibly a free man who nonetheless suffers discrimination and indignities every time he ventures into white-controlled spaces, whether it is the prison, Pichot's house, or the department store "front of town."

Gaines employs other viewpoints in his novel as well as Grant’s first person point of view. Readers get Jefferson’s diary toward the end of the novel, and directly after that a chapter written from the perspective of a third-person omniscient narrator. The use of different points of view gives the reader various perceptions of Jefferson’s execution. The Black community, including the children, seem to comprehend that Jefferson is dying under a false verdict. Grant's students kneel and pray for Jefferson on the day of his execution. Readers learn about the other side of town from the omniscient narrator's perspective, including an interaction between a white store clerk and her son. The clerk indicates that when her son asked what was going to happen at the jail, she answered, “the sheriff just had to put an old bad nigger away” (242). Her child sleeps soundly and forgets all about the interaction. The fact that the white child is unbothered by Jefferson's execution demonstrates how far removed he is from the Black community. The trauma of the Black community is not his or any other white child’s burden to bear. This view of "front of town" on the execution day dramatizes the effects of segregation on mentalities across the color line. The Black community is affected while the white community can remain largely indifferent, keeping the Black community out of their space.  

Links to the Archives

Drafts of A Lesson reveal even more about Gaines’s representation of segregation in the novel. For example, a draft of chapter 6 gives a glimpse of the white perspective on Jefferson's condition. In this draft, Inez, Henri Pichot's domestic worker, overhears him have a conversation with Louis Rougon. The two men debate Miss Emma’s mission to get Grant to teach Jefferson to be a man. Neither has much faith in the endeavor, but they make a bet all the same. The bet remains in the published version of the novel, but Gaines cut the conversation. However, this scene illustrates quite dramatically how Black characters are treated in white spaces. When Inez requests to go home, Pichot says, “I suppose you're in a hurry to get home to start blabbing.” Inez is expected to stand patiently by until Pichot is ready for a new drink at which point she must immediately get him one; however, she is also expected to keep Pichot’s conversations to herself. Limited to service jobs, black women like Inez would provide countless forms of help to white families, but were ultimately excluded from being a part of white spaces or families as equals.

Later in the chapter, Rougon and Pichot discuss a book in which a similar situation to Jefferson’s unfolded. This brings up the topic of what defines a man. Pichot enquires whether a man is “someone who can pick two hundred pounds of cotton a day, or someone who can recite Keats?” This is interesting because picking cotton is associated with Black enslaved labor while reciting Keats is associated with the literary canon of white men. This expresses clear skepticism about whether a Black man can be a man, premised on racist assumptions regarding intellectual capacity. Ironically, moments earlier, Pichot acknowledged he had not read the book Rougon mentioned. So, readers are left to wonder whether Pichot is a man by his own standards. By contrast, Grant, as an educated Black man, is at odds with the attitudes of white men like Pichot because he breaks with segregation stereotypes of Black men intellectually inferior. Ultimately, Gaines revised this chapter to narrate it from Grant's perspective. What it loses in representing the contradictions of Jim Crow-era white supremacy, it gains a more consistent point of view on the lived experience of racial subjugation.

One of the most telling clues as to how Gaines viewed his fictional representations of segregation manifest in his notes to the editors. One page of editorial feedback in particular gives us some insight. The editor suggests that Gaines should eliminate the words “back of town” when referring to the Rainbow Club. Gaines cheekily writes back that, “The Rainbow Club is ‘BACK OF TOWN.’” Gaines goes so far as to write ‘back of town’ in print, underlined, and all caps instead of his usual messy script. He explains that Black people “live and socialize” at the back of town. Further, he clarifies his intentions by writing, “This is 1948, not 1992—okay???” This note suggests Gaines felt strongly about representing the historical reality of segregation accurately. He wrote the Black community as living and socializing "back of town" because historically that is how the town was segregated. (New Roads, Gaines's template for Bayonne, continues to be segregated in much the same way even today.) Black spaces were intentionally marginalized beyond the central parts of the town. In this case "back of town" means away from the waterfront, but in terms of Jim Crow segregation "back" also included back doors, the back of buses, and the back of the line for public services. Gaines was well aware of the way his Black characters would have been treated in 1948, and the places they would been allowed to socialize under segregation. He took care to ensure his fiction represented that historical reality.