Essay Questions

Which celebrity resident of Negroland ignores the author’s parents when they throw a cast party for the production starring her?

The celebrity citizens in Negroland are especially important members of the populace since, of course, one of the guiding rules in this segment of society is to commit to using one special access to privilege within the black community to facilitate the betterment of the entire black community. An article that appeared in the December 1954 edition of Ebony magazine carried the scorching title “Why Negroes Don’t Like Eartha Kitt” in response to what was considered the notorious behavior by the black entertainer to prefer the company of privileged white friends and fans rather than associate with members of her race. This kind of behavior is deemed highly inappropriate to the expectations of those who occupy Negroland.

When Kitt’s very popular Broadway show New Faces of 1952 headed out on a tour that stopped in Chicago, the author’s parents—in a sign of just what sort of privilege is required to gain citizenship in Negroland—take the unusual step of sponsoring a cast party. The only member of the cast not to show up is Eartha Kitt. Her absence is taken as a direct insult resulting from, it was assumed, her feelings of anxiety about being faced with the reality of the humble origins from which she sprang to fame and fortune.

According to the author referencing a work by Ida Wells, what was the foundational evidence supporting the lynching of black men accused of molesting white women?

The structural framework of this book is a kind of duet taking place between the author’s own experiences and referencing of important literary works by black authors over history. One of those works which are used to provide historical context is The Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States by Ida B. Wells. Practically unknown even within black society for most of the 20th century, Wells has since become a powerful icon representing the successes of Black people in the pre-Civil Rights Movement era. Her book is a comprehensive catalog of all the multiple, varied, and absurd justifications given for lynching black men, women, and children. One of the most insane absurdities is a powerful indictment of an entire judicial system that operated on the obviously unsupported but widely believed assumption that any sexual contact between a black man and a white woman is by definition an act of sexual violence committed by the black man since “a voluntary alliance can't exist between a white woman and a colored man.”

What activities does the author identify as the singular privilege readily extended to white women that were denied to black women?

The whole point of this book is that privilege is not monolithic. A privileged life within the black community may be preferable to the desperation engendered by those less privileged, but it was in no way equitable with the privilege enjoyed by whites living within the same economic spectrum. To situate it even more singularly within the specific domain in which the author moved, there is simply no African American analog for Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton.