Chapter 4

"The post office was located in the back of their house. It was a small clean room, which she kept securely padlocked because of the 'nigras'.

I chose these two sentences as the ones that stood out to me the most in chapter four because it basically sums up everything that Lou and Ted felt about Yamacraw and the people on the island. While Conroy said that Lou seemed sincerely interested in the work that he was doing with the students he was teaching, in the same breath she was bragging about how the island bent over backwards to educate her son. Her son did not attend school with the "nigras". They hired a teacher to come teach him in a one room school house that they built just for him. He was the only white child on the island. I found this a bit ridiculous, mainly because what town would have really done that? I think that most people would have just moved off of the island so that their child could have gone to a different school. But instead, this family let the island accommodate their every need, whether it was appropriate or not. In their eyes I suppose that it was appropriate. It was during a time that education was segregated. To Ted and Lou, it may have seemed normal to them.

All of what they have said in the chapter four was about their opinons of the blacks on the island. It made me realize how strong the racism really was back then. I'm interested to see how Conroy will deal with these friends he's making later on in the book.