The father of Lucas Beauchamp was both "one of old Carothers McCaslin's" slaves and "his son too" (7) - that is, he was the offspring of a sexual relationship between the white plantation owner and one of his female slaves (who is not mentioned at all in this novel, but in Go Down, Moses is named Tomey, and Lucas' father is named Tomey's Turl; also not mentioned in this novel is the fact that the relationship between old Carothers and Tomey is incestuous, as she is his daughter).
The most educated man in Yoknapatawpha - Harvard, Heidelberg and the "State University" law school (3) - Gavin Stevens is one of Faulkner's favorite characters. In Intruder in the Dust he plays three main roles: public, personal and rhetorical. Although no longer the county's District Attorney, as both a lawyer and the descendant of one of the oldest families in Jefferson, he acts with the Sheriff to handle the crisis precipitated by the killing of Vinson Gowrie (and is even consulted by the school superintendent about closing the schools, 132).
Lucas Beauchamp says, proudly, "I am a McCaslin" (19). His white grandfather was a powerful planter, the first Yoknapatawpha McCaslin, who fathered a son with one of his slaves who in turn fathered Lucas.
"An old white spinster of seventy" (92), Eunice Habersham is the last descendant of one of the three original white settlers of Yoknapatawpha. She still lives in the house in town he built, and the descendant of one of his slaves still works for her, but she is extremely poor, eking out a living raising produce and chickens on her five acres of land and selling them door-to-door. There is, however, nothing impoverished about her spirit.
Aleck Sander is not a first and last name, but the way this character's given name, Alexander, is spoken. He is the son of Paralee, the Mallison and Stevens family cook, whose last name never appears either. He is also the companion of the novel's hero, Chick Mallison. The two are the same age, sixteen, but Aleck is black, and thus their relationship is inescapably constrained by what the novel calls the "pattern of Negro behavior" decreed by southern society (24).
