49 pages • 1-hour read
The Ways of White Folks
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Stories 10-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Story 10 Summary: “Little Dog”
Miss Briggs is the head bookkeeper for the firm Wilkins and Bryant. She takes pride in her work, feeling, “She was never a person to move about much or change jobs” (161). From a young age, Miss Briggs never went out regularly; she was raised by a single mother, and they didn’t have much. After attending business school, Miss Briggs took care of her mother, supporting them both until her mother’s death. Single and living alone since, Miss Briggs refuses to marry, thinking men will just want her for her money. Every day after work, she goes to the same place for dinner, Rose Bud Tea Shoppe, where she’s been served by the same two Black servers for years. Miss Briggs doesn’t feel lonely too often, except when she sees couples coming and going in the park near her apartment.
On her way home from a vacation, Miss Briggs happens upon a dog shop and buys a white dog named Flips. She takes Flips to the park near her apartment and enjoys seeing people smiling at her and Flips, but she never stays to socialize. Deep down, Miss Briggs distrusts people. Miss Briggs starts paying the janitor of her complex, a Swede, to deliver meat to her door to feed Flips with. When the meat stops being delivered, she investigates and discovers a Black man, Joe, has moved in with his family, and that he’s the new janitor. Joe agrees to deliver the meat to Miss Briggs and even brings it by more often than the last janitor. Joe is humble and kind, but Miss Briggs remains skeptical of him: “She kept looking at the big kind face of the janitor in her mind, perturbed that it was a Negro face, and that it stayed with her so” (169).
Thinking of Joe continues to make Miss Briggs nervous. She tries not to look at him when he comes by with the meat, but she can’t help but steal glances at him. He’s a kind person, but there’s something about him that makes her uncomfortable, so Miss Briggs decides to move. Before she leaves, Miss Briggs sees Joe one last time. She gives him a nice tip, and they exchange a few pleasantries. Afterwards, alone with Flips, Miss Briggs bursts into tears. She moves to her new apartment, and in no time, the neighborhood forgets about her.
Story 11 Summary: “Berry”
The story takes place at Dr. Renfield’s Summer Home for Crippled Children. After a Scandinavian kitchen boy quits, Mrs. Osborn, who helps manage the sanatorium, reluctantly hires Millberry Jones, a Black youth, to take his place. She immediately puts Millberry to work. Mrs. Osborn worries the White servants won’t get along with Millberry because he’s Black. She consults Dr. Renfield. Together, they elect to let Berry sleep alone in the attic and to pay him less money than the Scandinavian kitchen boy.
Millberry is happy to have a job. Uneducated, he has struggled to find work and is glad to be getting paid and eating regular meals. Despite his lack of education, Berry still understands he’s being taken advantage of: “It didn’t take him long to realize that he was doing far too much work for the Home’s eight dollars a week, and that everybody was imposing on him in that taken-for-granted way white folks do with Negro help” (180). Berry observes tension among the sanatorium’s staff. He also notes that the food is only good when parents visit and that Dr. Renfield is more interested in profit than caring for the children. The dishonest business practices upset Berry, but when he forms a loving bond with the children, he feels motivated to stay.
Berry helps the children at the beach, carrying them from the house to the sand when they need assistance. The children invite him to play with them, and Berry starts spending more of his free time at the beach: “The children became Millberry’s friends. They adored him and he them. They called him Berry. They put their arms about him” (183). One day, Berry is asked to help one of the boys in a wheelchair down the walkway to the beach. On the way down, the boy leans too far forward in his chair. Berry moves to help him, but the child falls out, and part of the wheelchair breaks. The boy is okay, mostly stunned, and Berry apologizes profusely. Dr. Renfield arrives, furious, and demands Berry hand over the child, but the boy wants to cling onto Berry. They examine the boy in Dr. Renfield’s office, and he proves to be fine. Dr. Renfield still blames Berry, and none of the other staffers care about Berry’s opinion or feelings. The doctor fires Berry, calls him a racist slur, and takes his last week’s wages to pay for the broken chair. Berry, having no other choice, heads back to the city.
Story 12 Summary: “Mother and Child”
A group of women, members of the Salvation Rock Ladies’ Missionary Society for the Rescue of the African Heathen, gossip before their March meeting. Their Ohio town is in a state of unrest and commotion. Douglass, a Black man, has been having an affair with a married White woman. Making matters worse, the woman just gave birth to Douglass’s son. Mrs. Sam Jones, an upstanding citizen, is shocked to see White people so angry and says they are even angry with her. Lucy Doves, another woman at the meeting, replies: “White folks is white folks, honey, South or North, North or South […] I’s lived both places and I know” (189). More women share similar stories; some haven’t been able to buy groceries and consider leaving town.
Douglass and his White lover remain the main topic of discussion. The pair were rumored to be in love for years and didn’t stop their affair after the woman married. One of the assembly members comments, “Everybody knows can’t no good come out o’ white and colored love. Everybody knows that” (193). Everyone is worried about the repercussions of Douglass’s actions. There is already talk about separating the White and Black children in school, previously unheard of in the town.
The conversation swells into a flurry of rapid comments from multiple women. Houses might be burned down. Maybe Douglass should be asked to leave. Is the child a boy or girl? A boy, some say. Douglass is too bold, another cuts in. Someone hushes the group and calls for the meeting to officially begin. A few last muttered comments mention the consequences of heathen actions. The meeting begins, opening with a song about the saving grace of Jesus and the ringing of a golden bell.
Story 13 Summary: “One Christmas Eve”
Arcie works as a maid for a White family. The work is hard, causing her aches and pains. She waits for the family to get home from Christmas shopping so she can do her own shopping. She observes their Christmas tree and wishes she could afford a tree for her five-year-old son, Joe. Arcie considers how much money she can spend on gifts for her son and reasons it won’t be much. Most of her weekly paycheck goes toward rent and a sitter for Joe. It gets later and later, and Arcie worries she won’t make it to the stores before they close. She considers leaving, but she needs the money her employer promised to pay her that night.
The White family returns from their shopping. Arcie gets paid less than she expects because her employer spent too much on gifts, but she takes what they offer. She goes home and gets Joe to go shopping downtown with her. Joe hears Santa Claus is there and wants to see him. They trek through the snow and the cold to the shops. Arcie buys Joe some gloves and hopes to find some cheap toys at the 10-cent store for him. Walking around, Joe sees a picture show and wants to go inside, but his mother informs him, “This ain’t Baltimore where they have shows for colored, too. In these here small towns, they don’t let colored folks in. We can’t go in there” (202).
Arcie tells her son to wait for her outside the store so his gifts will be a surprise. Joe obeys at first, but he can’t resist slipping into the picture show. He sees Santa Claus giving out candy. Joe gets closer. More and more eyes fall on him as he walks further and further into the theater. Santa Claus locks eyes with him, too. Santa grabs a rattler and shakes it violently at Joe. Everyone but Joe laughs. Frightened, Joe flees the theater. Outside, his mother finds him and scolds him for not obeying her. Joe recounts his story, and his mother tells him he shouldn’t have gone in the theater in the first place. She adds that the man Joe saw wasn’t Santa Claus: “If it was, he wouldn’t a-treated you like that. That’s a theatre for white folks—I told you once—and he’s just an old white man” (205).
Stories 10-13 Analysis
Hughes continues to use his stories to comment on the class disparity in the United States. “Berry” and “One Christmas Eve” show Berry and Arcie struggle with exploitation, unsympathetic employers, and a lack of resources. Berry’s poor job prospects are in part due to the lack of educational resources he had growing up: “[Berry] was from Georgia, where they don’t have many schools for Negroes” (180). Even without a good education, Berry doesn’t take long to recognize he’s being taken advantage of. Like characters in previous stories, he’s stuck between having a bad job and having no job at all.
Arcie faces similar financial hardships. Her meager weekly income barely keeps her and Joe afloat: “She only got seven dollars a week, and four of that went for her room and the landlady’s daily looking after Joe while Arcie was at work” (199-200). Conversely, in “Little Dog,” Miss Briggs enjoys stability from having a well-paying job that allows her to save. She doesn’t get anxious about finding a new apartment when she wants to move: “Fortunately there were plenty [apartments] to be had, what with people turned out for not being able to pay their rent—which would never happen to her, thank God! She had saved her money” (173). Hughes uses his stories to compare the anxieties of people in different economic standings. No character is stress free, but the poorer characters struggle to get ahead and often become trapped in exploitive situations.
The “ways” of White folks continue to be referenced, playing into the collection’s title. In “Mother and Child,” when discussing the rise in racial tension, a woman claims that, regardless of region, that’s how White people are. Fittingly, throughout The Ways of White Folks, characters regularly comment on the behavior of White people. Some see normalized violent behavior, strange behavior, and a lack of empathy. Hughes assigns these opinions to his characters rather than make such views the message of his fiction. Berry, for example, states that the negative behavior he witnesses is the ways of some White people, not all. Berry’s statement also serves as the epigraph for the collection. Such choices tell the reader that the bad behavior Hughes depicts is not behavior he thinks all White people in the United States embody. Rather, the stories show how racism creates a cycle of pain for everyone, and, over time, those wounds become harder to mend.
Structurally, Hughes provides the reader with stories of varying length. Stories 10-13 all fall on the shorter side. The shortest two, “Mother and Child” and “One Christmas Eve,” take place over a short period of time as well. “Mother and Child” elapses over a single conversation, and “One Christmas Eve” transpires over one evening. The limited setting and action of these stories suit their length. In these stories, Hughes chooses to draw out his scenes. The dialogue becomes enlivened and enriched in “Mother and Child.” A vivid picture of a cold Christmas setting is felt in “One Christmas Eve.” “Little Dog” and “Berry” are longer, but not by much. More time elapses, but Hughes keeps the locations limited and allows the drama to slowly build. Miss Briggs spends most of the story in her apartment, and Berry spends all his story at the sanatorium. In each, Hughes displays a careful consideration for how to tell each of his stories given their length.
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