Unnamed Negro Planing Mill Workers

Character Key Number: 
2148
Display Name: 
Unnamed Negro Planing Mill Workers
Sort Name: 
Unnamed Negro Planing Mill Workers
Ever Present in Yoknapatawpha?: 
Yes
Biography: 

Light in August never explicitly identifies the "fellows" who are shoveling sawdust at the planing mill when Christmas is hired and told to "get a scoop and help them fellows move that sawdust" (33). But the narrator calls the work Joe is doing a "negro's job" (36), and "Joe Brown," who shovels sawdust alongside Christmas, calls it "doing the work of a nigger slave" (96). So that's the logic behind our decision to add this Character to the database: the job is associated with blacks, and so the "fellows" doing it when Christmas starts work are presumably black.