Uncle Tom's Children

Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) is a collection of four short stories and novellas by prominent African-American author Richard Wright. All of the stories deal with the violent side of racism in the southern United States. The collection was expanded to five stories in 1940 with the inclusion of “Bright and Morning Star,” and an essay at the beginning about growing up under Jim Crow laws in southwest Mississippi. Uncle Tom’s Children was notable for bringing black life to the forefront of American letters and criticism. Wright followed the collection with the novel Native Son (1940) and the memoir Black Boy (1945).

Editions from the 1940s onward open with Wright’s essay, “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” The essay looks at sexual undercurrents of racism, its volatile and arbitrary nature, and the negotiation of injustice, compromise, and dignity that all black people in the south manage. In one powerful scene, a black hotel worker is castrated by a group of white people after patronizing a white prostitute. Wright, born in 1908, first became aware of his blackness while his family lived in Arkansas. While playing “war” games with an interracial group, young Wright was incensed after some white boys threw broken bottles at him, cutting his skin. When he complained to his mother, she slapped him, telling him to never fight “white folks again.”

In “Big Boy Leaves Home,” a group of young black men is tortured and murdered by white southerners. Big Boy and his friends—Lester, Buck, and Bobo—go to a swimming pool that’s unofficially reserved for white people. With no one seemingly there, the boys strip down and go for a swim. A white woman walks by and is scandalized to see the boys swimming in the pool. As they run for their clothes, the white woman, believing she’s under attack, starts screaming for her husband, Jim. Jim appears and shoots Lester and Buck to death. In self-defense, Big Boy seizes the rifle and shoots Jim, injuring him. Big Boy and Bobo flee the scene.



Big Boy’s family agrees he has to leave town to avoid a lynching. He goes into hiding. Bobo is eventually captured by the white mob and tarred and feathered—the mob placed hot tar on his body, then a host of feathers that wouldn’t come off in order to humiliate him. Big Boy escapes, though it’s not certain if he will remain safe.

The second story, “Down by the Riverside,” follows a farmer named Mann as he walks through his leaky house. There’s a major flood outside, and Mann needs a boat so that he and his family (including a very pregnant wife) can move up to the hills and save themselves from the flood. He sends a family member, Bob, to sell a donkey and buy a boat, but Bob is a bit incompetent and returns with very little money and a boat he stole.

The family ventures in the boat toward the hill, coming across the boat’s owner, a white man named Heartfield. The man starts shooting at the family, and Mann returns fire, eventually killing Heartfield.



The family continues rowing to the nearest hospital, a Red Cross shelter. Unfortunately, by the time Mann arrives, his wife and the baby have died.

Mann is asked to help a family upriver who are stranded by the flood. Along with another black man, he agrees and finds out that the family is none other than the Heartfields. Even though the family wants him murdered and would likely tell on him (thus ensuring his awful death) Mann helps rescue the family.

Back on the hills, Mann tries to avoid detection but is eventually found out. He’s shot by an army soldier and dies by the river.



“Long Black Song” follows a young couple named Silas and Sarah. One day, a white music salesman comes to Sarah’s door. He flirts with her and says she should buy one of his graphophones (device to play music). When she resists, he rapes her and leaves the graphophone, saying he’ll collect the money tomorrow. When Silas returns from work, he sees the graphophone and believes Sarah cheated on him with a white man. Silas hates white people and beats Sarah up, making her sleep outside the house. The next day, the salesman returns to collect the money; Silas confronts him, shooting him dead. Soon after, Sarah watches from a hill as a mob of white people shoot at the house and eventually light it on fire; Silas kills as many other people as he can before he dies.

In the penultimate story, “Fire and Cloud,” a minister named Taylor must choose between keeping the peace with the white police force or marching with a group of Communists who advocate for racial equality. After a fellow minister alerts the authorities of his Communist sympathies, Taylor is picked up in a car, taken to the woods, and cruelly whipped. He later learns that others in his group were also beaten randomly. The unjust violence clarifies for Taylor that he must march with the predominantly white Communists. The title of the story comes from a vision Taylor has at the end where he conceptualizes the violent whipping as fire and a cloud as the group of marching people who are moving toward “the Promised Land.”

“Bright and Morning Star” considers how Christian principles of self-sacrifice can be applied to political activism. As the story opens, Sue is waiting for her son, Johnny-Boy, to come home. Now a Communist, Sue learns that there’s an informer in their midst and that she has to warn the others not to go to a certain meeting. She sends Johnny-Boy out to alert the others, but he’s intercepted and eventually tortured by the police. Sue takes a gun wrapped in a white sheet to the woods where she knows most “interrogations” happen. She sees the local sheriff (who previously came to her house and beat her) and Booker, whom she now knows is the mole. She shoots Booker dead to keep the other Communists safe. The sheriff returns fire, killing both Sue and Johnny-Boy. In her last thoughts, Sue is content that she stood up for her beliefs.