Unnamed Runaway Slaves

Among the various kinds of jailed prisoners mentioned in "A Name for the City" and again in Requiem for a Nun are "runaway slaves who were captured in the settlement" (202, 6). Runaway slaves in the period before the Civil War are very rare in the Yoknapatawpha fictions. The story does not say where these slaves escaped from. Instead, it notes that the "single wooden bar" across the door of the jail effectively keeps them from escaping again (202, 6).