“The Black Ball”
John is wary at first of pursuing the matter raised by the union organizer. It is only as a result of the oppressive white supremacy of his employer Mr. Berry that he fingers the man’s card in his pocket with the suggestion that interest has just become victorious overs concern. Mr. Berry’s obnoxious behavior may have just ironically ensured he will soon have to deal with the power of a union.
“Mister Toussan”
The story is about two schoolkids getting their first peek at a school system that actually teaches black history in which a black man is the hero. The liberator of the Haitian people, Toussaint L’Ouverture, is ironically compared to a white man because white heroes (fictional or otherwise) are the only real reference point for black kids:
“Toozan! Just like Tarzan…”
“King of the Bingo Game”
Against all odds—an in a dramatically intrusive fashion—the protagonist of this story manages to do the almost impossible thing necessary to win the jackpot at a bingo game. The problem is the dramatic intrusion which has raised the stakes of the considerably beyond the norm. Just as he realizes he has won by stopping the bingo wheel on double-zero he realizes he has lost when the policeman’s truncheon comes crashing down upon his skull.
“A Party Down at the Square”
The title of this story is both literal and ironically metaphorical at once. The events which causes a crowd to gather in the town square in a celebratory mood is not strictly a party in the sense most people define the word. The party is the lynching of a black man and it is a whites-only, Christians-only affair. Well, with the notable exception of the guest of dishonor.
The Partygoer
The very same story of a lynching becoming a party for a small southern town’s white population also deals out a satisfying bit of irony. The lynching is briefly—of course, briefly—interrupted by the arrival of small plane in distress which nearly crashes but manages to avoid doing so at the last minute. In that last ditch effort not to crash, however, the plane’s landing gear clips a power line which causes the line to sever and fall to the ground where a white woman enjoying the party happens to be standing in a puddle of rain. She is instantly fried, stiff as a board, just as dead as the lynching victim. Oh, and the final irony is that the consequence of the shock had not only fried her body, but charred her flesh until it was just as black as the lynching victim as well.
