Unnamed Negro Servants 2

In "Shall Not Perish" these Negro servants appear figuratively in a description of "all the grieving [people] about the earth" who have lost loved ones in the war. The narrator establishes the difference between "the rich" and "the poor" on this basis: the rich live in big houses "with ten nigger servants" and the poor live on small farms by their own sweat (103). The introduction of race into this representation of people "about the earth" is a reminder of how the young boy telling this story, at least, segregates humanity along the color line created by Jim Crow.