Not Without Laughter

"This going away was a new thought, and the dark, strong-bodied young woman at the table suddenly began to dream of the cities she had never seen to which Jimboy would lead her. Why, he had been as far north as Canada and as far south as New Orleans, and it wasn’t anything for him to go to Chicago or Denver any time! He was a traveling man—and she, Annjee, was too meek and quiet, that’s what she was—too stay-at-homish. Never going nowhere, never saying nothing back to those who scolded her or talked about her, not even sassing white folks when they got beside themselves….'I want to travel,’ she said to herself. 'I want to go places, too.' But that was why Jimboy married her, because she wasn’t a runabout."

This quote highlights the difference between men and women in their ability to move to different geographic places for mobility. While coming and going are seen as male prerogatives, Annjee's quiet longing shows that women also have the same desires to escape. Many of the African-American migrants who went to cities in search of opportunity were men, so the difference between Annjee and Jimboy's initial experiences is an accurate reflection of the gender divide during the Great Migration. 

“‘Your old Jesus is white, I guess, that’s why! He’s white and stiff and don’t like niggers!’”

Harriet definitively rejects the religion of her mother. While Hager's Christianity serves as a balm that allows her to survive slavery and poverty, Harriet views religion as just another symptom of the hypocrisy of whites and the willingness of African Americans to be duped into passive acceptance of racism. 

“Mrs. Rice went out again through the swinging door, but Sandy stood near the sink with a burning face and eyes that had suddenly filled with angry tears. He couldn’t help it—hearing his sweating mother reprimanded by this tall white woman in the flowered dress. Black, hard-working Annjee answered: ‘Yes, m’am,’ and that was all—but Sandy cried."

The poor treatment that Annjee receives from her employer is shocking to Sandy but typical, based on his mother's response. As a child, Sandy has not been exposed to the world of work and the frequent racism African Americans encounter. This scene is an important moment because Sandy's dawning recognition of the unfairness of racism is a part of his coming of age as a young man.

“'White folks run the world, and the only thing colored folks are expected to do is work and grin and take off their hats as though it don’t matter […] O, I hate ’em!' Harriett cried.’"

While Hager has learned to accommodate racism, her youngest daughter has not. Her refusal to wear the mask of accommodation is representative of the more militant response of the first generation born after slavery.

“Four homeless, plug-ugly niggers, that’s all they were, playing mean old loveless blues in a hot, crowded little dancehall in a Kansas town on Friday night. Playing the heart out of loneliness with a wide-mouthed leader, who sang everybody’s troubles until they became his own. The improvising piano, the whanging banjo, the throbbing bass drum, the hard-hearted little snare-drum, the brassy cornet that laughed, ‘Whaw-whaw-whaw […] Whaw!’ were the waves in this lonesome sea of harmony from which Benbow’s melancholy voice rose."

Blues and African American popular and folk music in general are associated with African-American culture and identity in the novel. In this passage, Hughes uses lyrical language and onomatopoeia to represent the sounds the instruments make. The interaction between the musicians and the African Americans dancing in the venue allows African Americans to express themselves and their emotions in ways that are not permitted in the racist, assaultive world outside of the hall.

“Then a man with a banjo in his hands began to play, but until then the show had been lifeless. 'Listen to him,' Jimboy said, punching Sandy. 'He’s good!' The piece he was picking was full of intricate runs and trills long drawn out, then suddenly slipping into tantalizing rhythms. It ended with a vibrant whang!—and the audience yelled for more. As an encore, he played a blues and sang innumerable verses […] And to Sandy it seemed like the saddest music in the world—but the white people around him laughed.”

Here, Jimboy teaches Sandy how to listen to the blues and recognize skill when he hears it. This moment of instruction is one of the rare moments when Jimboy serves as a mentor and father figure to his son. That he does so in the realm of music shows just how important music is to Jimboy's sense of himself as an African-American man. Sandy's recognition that there is a distinction between his response as an African American and the amused response of whites also reflects his growing awareness of the impact of race on identity.

“‘To take money and use it for what it ain’t s’posed to be used is the same as stealing,' Jimboy went on gravely to his son. 'That’s what you done today, and then come home and lie about it. Nobody’s ugly as a liar, you know that!...I’m not much maybe. Don’t mean to say I am. I won’t work a lot, but what I do I do honest. White folks gets rich lyin’ and stealin’—and some niggers gets rich that way, too— but I don’t need money if I got to get it dishonest, with a lot o’ lies trailing behind me, and can’t look folks in the face. It makes you feel dirty! It’s no good!’"

While Jimboy frequently rejects the more conservative morality of Hager, his stern lecture to Sandy makes it clear that he does believe in the importance of personal integrity. That he credits whites with a lack of morality (and some African Americans as well) because of their willingness to suspend integrity for the sake of material gain later serves as a counter narrative to Tempy's idolizing of whites. This intervention changes Sandy's perspective on morality and is reflected in some of the important decisions he makes later in the novel. This moment is therefore one in which he matures.

“‘Now,’ said the teacher, ‘you three colored children take the seats behind Albert. You girls take the first two, and you,’ pointing to Sandy, ‘take the last one.’”

Part of Sandy's coming of age is his engagement with the world outside of his family. In this scene, he encounters explicit institutional racism. The upset and angry responses of the children show how deeply even the youngest African Americans feel the sting of racism. That Sandy—the only boy—is placed last, shows the gendered dimensions of racism in this particular situation.

“‘Bought this house washin’, and made as many payments myself as Cudge come near; an’ raised ma chillens washin’; an’ when Cudge taken sick an’ laid on his back for mo’n a year, I taken care o’ him washin’; an' when he died, paid de funeral bill washin’, cause he ain’t belonged to no lodge. Sent Tempy through de high school and edicated Annjee till she marry that onery pup of a Jimboy, an’ Harriett till she left home. Yes, sir. Washin’, an’ here I is with me arms still in de tub!...But they’s one mo’ got to go through school yet, an’ that’s ma little Sandy. If de Lawd lets me live, I’s gwine make a edicated man out o’ him. He’s gwine be another Booker T. Washington.’”

Hager represents the figure of the black matriarch in her family and community. Her account of how her taking in laundry sustained and sustains her family makes the economic contributions of such women visible.

“That’s all he wanted—a Golden Flyer with flexible rudders, so you could guide it easy. Boy! Wouldn’t he come shooting down that hill by the Hickory Woods where the fellows coasted every year! They cost only four dollars and ninety-five cents and surely, his grandma could afford that for him, even if his mother was sick and she had just paid her taxes. Four ninety-five—but he wouldn’t want anything else if Aunt Hager would buy that sled for Santa Claus to bring him!"

Sandy is still young enough that he seemingly has not yet grasped the import of his family's poverty. His dream of getting the sled despite his family's financial difficulties shows that he is very much a child still.

“But Sandy knew very well that there wasn’t really any Santa Claus! He knew in his heart that Hager and his mother were Santa Claus—and that they didn’t have any money. They were poor people.”

As Christmas gets closer, Sandy begins to think about the reality of his family's financial situation. His willingness to admit that Santa Claus is a fairy tale shows his increasing maturity.

“Next door at the Johnson’s all was dark and quiet, but across the street, where white folks lived, the lights were burning brightly and a big Christmas tree with all its candles aglow stood in the large bay window while a woman loaded it with toys.”

As Sandy becomes more cognizant of the world outside of his home, his ability to see the differences between the material comforts whites have and those of African Americans increases. The materialism of Christmas (and whites) is represented in this scene. As a boy who is growing up, Sandy has just begun to sense the unfairness of the world.

“But when he got big, he would go to Detroit. And maybe New York, too, where his geography said they had the tallest buildings in the world, and trains that ran under the river […] How ugly African colored folks looked in the geography—with bushy heads and wild eyes! Aunt Hager said her mother was an African, but she wasn’t ugly and wild; neither was Aunt Hager; neither was little dark Willie-Mae, and they were all black like Africans […] And Reverend Braswell was as black as ink, but he knew God […] God didn’t care if people were black, did He? […] Did God love people who told fairy stories and lied to kids about storks and Santa Claus? […] Santa Claus was no good, anyhow! Goddamn Santa Claus for not bringing him the sled he wanted for Christmas! It was all a lie about Santa Claus!”

This quote shows the end of Sandy's boyhood and his entrance into adolescence. This scene—one of the jumbled ones in which Sandy reflects on the meaning of the experiences he has—is one that touches on his growing interest in sex/reproduction and his developing ability to reject racist representations of African Americans (a crucial skill for African-American adolescents).

“‘They’s like spoilt chillens what’s got too much o’ ever’thing—an’ they needs us niggers, what ain’t got nothing […] White peoples maybe mistreats you an’ hates you, but when you hates ’em back, you’s de one what’s hurted, ’cause hate makes yo’ heart ugly—that’s all it does....There ain’t no room in this world fo’ nothin’ but love, Sandy chile.’”

Hager's attitude toward whites is much more forgiving than that of her children; it emerges from her experience as a favored slave before Emancipation. Her advice to Sandy to avoid hatred because it damages him comes to be an important antidote that helps him avoid the self-destructive bitterness that almost destroys Harriet. 

“But the barber-shop then was a man’s world […] He hadn’t been around uncouth fellows long enough to learn the protective art of turning back a joke. He had discovered already, though, that so-called jokes are often not really jokes at all, but rather unpleasant realities that hurt unless you can think of something equally funny and unpleasant to say in return. But the men who patronized Pete Scott’s barber-shop seldom grew angry at the hard pleasantries that passed for humor, and they could play the dozens for hours without anger, unless the parties concerned became serious, when they were invited to take it on the outside. And even at that a fight was fun, too.”

As an adolescent, Sandy experiences important rites of passage to usher him into young manhood. His exposure to the world of work and mentoring in the barbershop—a site associated with black masculinity—shows that Sandy has to learn about what it means to be a confident African American man by going outside of his home.

"'I guess Kansas is getting like the South, isn’t it, ma?' Sandy said to his grandmother as they came out on the porch that evening after supper. 'They don’t like us here either, do they?' But Aunt Hager gave him no answer."

In this passage, Sandy attempts to make sense of the decision of the amusement park owners to bar African-American children from attending the opening day of the amusement park for free. The rejection of the children is an example of the widespread discrimination practiced by businesses and managers of public spaces. For many of the African-American children, this rejection is one of the first times they have been confronted with discrimination in public facilities; the encounter is a racial rite of passage that ushers these children into adulthood in a racist world. Hager's silence, followed by her singing of a hymn that emphasizes African-American hope in an afterlife, serves as a subtle critique of the ability of her attitude of accommodation to meet the needs of this new generation of children.

"There Sandy turned, raised his boot-black box furiously above his head, and flung it with all his strength at the group of laughing white men in which the drunken southerner was standing. From one end of the whizzing box a stream of polish-bottles, brushes, and cans fell clattering across the lobby while Sandy disappeared through the door, running as fast as his legs could carry him in the falling snow."

Sandy faces the crucible of explicit and direct discrimination when he is accosted by the racist Mississippian who attempts to force him to perform black folk dances. Sandy's angry, primal response signals his rejection of Hager and Annjee's quiet acceptance of racist abuse. His reaction also reflects the terror he experiences as he confronts racism in the world of work.

"Colored people certainly needed to come up in the world, Tempy thought, up to the level of white people—dress like white people, talk like white people, think like white people—and then they would no longer be called 'niggers.'"

Tempy believes in the ideology of racial uplift, which advances the idea that more affluent and intellectually gifted African Americans have a duty to advance the race and to represent African Americans as respectable people. The ugly underside of racial uplift, internalized racism, is made explicit in this quote, however. 

“His grandmother had thought that Booker T. was the greatest of men, but maybe she had been wrong. Anyway, this Du Bois could write! Gee, it made you burn all over to read what he said about a lynching. But Sandy did not mention Booker Washington again to Tempy, although, months later, at the library he read his book called Up from Slavery, and he was sure that Aunt Hager hadn’t been wrong. 'I guess they are both great men,' he thought."

A somewhat more mature Sandy, as a result of his ability to read and think critically for himself, doesn't just take Tempy's word when it comes to her discrimination between the heroes of Hager's generation and the heroes of Tempy's generation. Sandy's opinion shows that the new generation coming of age at the turn of the twentieth century has a different perspective from the older generations represented by Tempy. 

“‘Being colored is like being born in the basement of life, with the door to the light locked and barred—and the white folks live upstairs. They don’t want us up there with them, even when we’re respectable like Dr. Mitchell, or smart like Dr. Du Bois […] And guys like Jap Logan—well, Jap don’t care anyway! Maybe it’s best not to care, and stay poor and meek waiting for heaven like Aunt Hager did […] But I don’t want heaven! I want to live first!' Sandy thought. 'I want to live!’”

As Sandy grows older and is exposed to more in terms of literature and life experience, he attempts to forge a path that is different from what he has been taught by all of the members of his family. His desire for freedom and his aspirations are typical of the period of the Harlem Renaissance when this novel was composed.

“He hadn’t expected the great city to be monotonous and ugly like this and he was vaguely disappointed. No towers, no dreams come true! Where were the thrilling visions of grandeur he had held? Hidden in the dusty streets? Hidden in the long, hot alleys through which he could see at a distance the tracks of the elevated trains?”

Sandy, like the many millions of African Americans who eventually joined the Great Migration away from rural America and to cities, finds that his highly idealized notions of the city as a paradise and land of opportunity do not match up with the actual city. This quote shows his first sight of the city and the disappointment that the experience occasions.

“‘Not like my father, always wanting to go somewhere. I’d get as tired of traveling all the time, as I do of running this elevator up and down day after day […] I’m more like Harriett—not wanting to be a servant at the mercies of white people forever […] I want to do something for myself, by myself […] Free […] I want a house to live in, too, when I’m older—like Tempy’s and Mr. Siles’s […] But I wouldn’t want to be like Tempy’s friends—or her husband, dull and colorless, putting all his money away in a white bank, ashamed of colored people.’”

Sandy rejects his father's lack of a work ethic but also rejects Tempy's acceptance of racist and classist notions of working-class African Americans. His rejection of their values and his reflection on his own values show that he is coming of age.

"Clowns! Jazzers! Band of dancers! […] Sandy remembered his grandmother whirling around in front of the altar at revival meetings in the midst of the other sisters, her face shining with light, arms outstretched as though all the cares of the world had been cast away; Harriett in the back yard under the appletree, eagle-rocking in the summer evenings to the tunes of the guitar; Jimboy singing […] But was that why Negroes were poor, because they were dancers, jazzers, clowns?...The other way round would be better: dancers because of their poverty; singers because they suffered; laughing all the time because they must forget […] ‘It’s more like that,’ thought Sandy.”

One of the key reasons why Sandy is able to appreciate the cultural richness of his upbringing is that he sees the connection between Hager's religious ecstasy in church and Harriet's much more profane popular dances. His appreciation for African American music and culture inoculate him against the internalized racism that grounds Tempy and Arkins's ideas about racial uplift. Sandy shows in this passage that he understands the African American experience both intellectually and experientially, and as a result, is able to have a psychologically healthier self-concept than Tempy.