Brother Harp's Letter To A White Men In Jail

289 Words2 Pages
The narrator receives an anonymous, unstamped letter telling him not to “go too fast” and to remember that he is still a black man in a white world. He asks another black member of the Brotherhood, Brother Tarp, if anyone in the organization dislikes him. Tarp assures him that he is well liked and says that he doesn’t know who wrote the letter. Tarp asks the narrator if he comes from the South. Tarp then confides in him that he spent nineteen years in a black chain gang for having said “no” to a white man. He gives the narrator a leg iron to remind him of their real cause. Another black member of the group, Brother Wrestrum, glimpses the leg iron on the narrator’s desk and suggests that he put it away because it “dramatizes” the racial differences