The Men of Brewster Place

Ben begins to narrate his own story, looking back on his 68 years of life and lamenting the lack of respect he has received. Ben grew up with his sharecropper grandparents in rural Tennessee. They lived on the land of Percy Wall, a place with 40 shacks, a general store and post office run by Wall, and a church and juke joint where residents would “pray—or party—the misery away” (12). Ben’s grandfather, however, indulged in neither. Instead, he sat silently on his porch with a closed Bible. He would open it, he claimed, when someone could show him “the place that says white people is going to hell” (12).

Ben’s grandparents were born into enslavement on a Virginia plantation. Grandma Jones was an excellent cook, and Grandpa Jones worked in the stables. One day, the overseer sent Grandpa Jones’s sister into the woods to pick berries with some other children and then claimed that he was off to town but rode toward the woods. Sometime later, Sister came out of the woods, crying with her face swollen and blood running down her legs. They rushed Sister to the midwife’s shack, and when they couldn’t save her, Grandpa Jones sped to the white doctor’s house. In his fear, he forgot “his place” and knocked on the front door instead of the back. Angry, the housekeeper made him wait as punishment, and by the time the doctor arrived at the plantation, Sister was dead. The enslaver talked with the overseer behind the closed door of his study; then, the man went back to work, and the incident was never spoken of again.

After Sister’s funeral, the enslaved people went back to work, and Grandpa Jones waited for someone to condemn what had happened to her. However, no one did, and he began to believe that “his people [were] doomed” (15). Even when he tried to speak up at Sister’s funeral, his mother slapped him, telling him to “shut [his] mouth” and “be a man” (15).

Grandpa Jones grew into a quiet man who despaired of the world. He died when Ben was seven, leaving him and Grandma Jones alone. Ben spent his childhood helping his grandmother with her laundry business, and when he was big enough, he began working in the cotton fields. Grandma Jones died when Ben was 17, and he decided to go to Memphis, where he worked in a hotel. Ben did his job well, even though the railroad workers treated him poorly to “make ’em feel like men again” after “bowing and scraping to passengers” on the train (17).

One day, a fight broke out between two bellhops, Billy and Rayburn. Most men who worked at the hotel hated Billy because of his enthusiastic service, always bowing and smiling more than necessary. Ben understood that some Black men who made a living picking cotton “would do anything” to keep another job (18), but the other men called Billy “a house Negro” (18). When Rayburn stepped on one of Billy’s carefully shined shoes, the other man flew into a rage and pulled a knife on him.

After the incident at the hotel, Ben became a “shoeshine boy” at the railroad station. He worked at a row of 12 chairs, 10 for white customers and two set aside for Black men. The best way to get customers was to smile a lot because it made the white men “feel comfortable.” However, Ben didn’t mind shining Black men’s shoes like other shoe shiners did. Often, there was a long line of Black customers waiting for the two chairs set aside for them while many of the chairs for white customers were empty, and the other shiners tried to attract white men, which saddened Ben.

While working as a shoe shiner, Ben met Elvira, who worked in the train station’s bathroom. Ben was attracted to her because she could read and write, even though the other men called her “Evil Elvira” because “she was known not to be easy” (20). Elvira had a bad cough, and the doctor told her she needed fresh air, so she and Ben moved to the country and became sharecroppers. Ben describes sharecropping as “a little more than slavery but a lot less than doing well” (21). Between loans for seeds, equipment, and food, they were rarely able to break even. Many sharecroppers had lots of children to help with the work, but Ben and Elvira only had one daughter. Her foot was broken at birth, and as a result, the girl couldn’t work much. Elvira griped that both Ben and their daughter were lazy, but Ben loved his daughter and tried to defend her from Elvira’s wrath.

At first, the family was pleased when Mr. Clyde, the farm’s owner, asked their daughter to clean his house. However, after about two months, she came home crying. When Ben pressed her, she admitted that Mr. Clyde was “trying to mess with her” and had laughed when she had threatened to tell her father (22). Elvira immediately accused her of lying and forced her to continue cleaning the man’s house.

Ben remembers Mr. Clyde driving by to drop his daughter off one morning. Elvira stood on the porch and chatted with Mr. Clyde while Ben said nothing. After Mr. Clyde left, Elvira chastised Ben for his silence, insisting that their daughter was telling lies to get out of work. She told Ben that he should be grateful to Mr. Clyde for giving their daughter work. Ben told Elvira that if he “was half a man” (25), he would have taken his daughter away from Mr. Clyde. Elvira retaliated, saying that if Ben were more of a man, they wouldn’t be sharecroppers.

Instead of confronting Mr. Clyde, Ben began drinking. One day, his daughter ran to Memphis, leaving a note apologizing for being a burden and asserting her commitment to making her own way. She often sent money home, but the envelopes never had a return address.

Elvira eventually left Ben for another man, and Ben moved north and began working at Brewster Place. He reflects that although it’s “not much of a place to live” (27), Brewster Place has become his home. Ben has never told anyone about his past; instead, he sits pondering the question, “What does it mean to be a man?” (28). He keeps drinking, slowly killing himself to avoid facing the memory of his daughter’s eyes. Sometimes he thinks he has the answer, and he hopes that it’s true because he is “doing the best [he] can with what [he’s] got left” (28).