“Now how come you have to start lying?"
One of the themes which the stories explore is the fundamental divergence between how white society views the concept of white supremacy and the way that black society sees this oppression. The standard white view is the conventional one populated by the most extreme stereotypes of KKK members in white hoods, Confederate rebel flags, rednecks and violence. Certainly is not by accident that the collection starts off with a story presenting exactly idea with its presentation of a lynching as seen through a young white narrator. Once the lens of white society is removed and the narrative perspective switches to that of the black experience, the true breadth and depth and what is meant by white supremacy is revealed.
The title character of the story “Mister Toussan” is here being discussed by two black boys. When one of them relates to the other how his teacher “tole us ‘bout one of the African guys named Toussan what she said whipped Napoleon!” the other boy’s reply quoted above says it all. He immediately rejects the story as a fiction because the educational system he knows is an example of white supremacy in the act of forwarding white figures in history as heroes while ignoring or studiously covering up heroic acts in history by non-whites.
I don’t know what started it.
The opening line of this particular story is also the opening line of the entire collection. The narrator is a young white boy and he commences to describe the “it” with imagery of townspeople running with excitement toward the Square in anticipation of a party. The “party” turns out to be the lynching of a young black man for nor particular reason. Using an offensive term which will not repeated here, the narrator informs the reader that is a Saturday night and this is a time and place usually shared roughly equally by the town’s black and white residents. On this particular night, however, the streets noticeably and eerily empty of blacks as the Square becomes dominated by whites. The opening line is significant not just to the story, but to the whole history of the post-Reconstruction experience of being black in America. The narrator’s lack of understanding of the details of the lynching can be broadened out to encompass a comprehensive ignorance extending well beyond the specifics of lynching.
Because it’s the most meaningful act in the world…because it makes me less like you, he thought.
In the collection’s title story a young black man named Todd who has dreamed all of his life of flying planes comes crashing down to earth in the middle of Alabama during a test flight. Todd has managed to make his dream come true by becoming part of the legendary World War II unit known collectively as the Tuskegee Airmen. Alas, the crash has convinced Todd that his dream is now over forever and he will never be given another chance. Even worse, he dreads that his future will now follow along much the same course as Jefferson, the old sharecropper who rescues him. At one point, Jefferson askes Todd exactly why he would ever want to fly around up in the sky. Todd immediately is prepared with an answer, but it remains only a thought, unspoken and unsaid, replaced instead by perhaps the more noble response of “It’s a good a way to fight and die as I know.”
But it is that unvoiced truth that offers the authentic insight into Todd’s motivations as well as his fear. Becoming a pilot is an evolution that represents the next movement forward in the evolution of the black man within white society. To fly with equality among white aviators separates him from the past represented by Jefferson: a past marked by limited opportunities and discrimination, hard work without no real hope for payoff, and the chance to decide what life means for himself rather than meaning imposed upon him.
