In Light in August the matron of the (all-white) orphanage in Memphis is "past fifty, flabby faced, with weak, kind, frustrated eyes" (133). When she hears that Joe Christmas is being called a Negro, she decides to place him with a family as quickly as possible. She seems to have the child's interests at heart, both in making sure Christmas doesn't have to go to the "colored" orphanage, and in keeping the rumors about his race from McEachern, the white man who adopts him.
This is the man in Light in August who sells Joe Christmas the "stale and flyspecked box of candy" he had won "for ten cents on a punching board in a store" (191).
All Light in August says about this man is that he was killed in St. Louis by Calvin Burden I "in an argument about slavery" (242) - though since Calvin is a fierce abolitionist, we can assume this man is pro-slavery.
This is the "second man" who is at Max's house when Joe arrives there looking for Bobbie in Light in August; Joe had "never seen" him before, but he is obviously a kind of partner in Max and Mame's prostitution racket (214). He certainly dresses the part of a gangster from this era: "His hat was tipped forward so that the shadow of the brim fell across his mouth" (214). He assists Max and Mame's hasty departure from town. He beats Joe into insensibility.
The man whom Mrs. Hightower meets in a Memphis hotel in Light in August is drunk when he registers under a fictitious name as her husband. It is not clear if she had ever met him on any of her earlier trips to Memphis, nor what role he might have played in her death there, but the narrative says that "he was arrested" (67).
In Light in August the lawyer McEachern visits in the town that is five miles from his farm to do "business" with has an office near the courthouse there (173).
These women in Light in August observe and talk about the conduct and behavior of other women. At church on Sundays, they talk quietly and nod "to arriving friends as they pass in the aisle" (366). When the Hightowers arrive, they watch and worry about Mrs. Hightower; they bring food to the Reverend when she goes to a sanitorium.
In one of the many scenes of pursuit in Light in August, Nathaniel and Juana spend several years searching for a "white preacher" (as opposed to a "priest") to marry them suggests how scarce the Protestant preachers were in the novel's vision of the frontier (247). It's not said where the "preacher" who does marry them in Kansas is from, but on the "Saturday night" before the Sunday wedding he arrives at the Burden home from somewhere else (250).
These men in Light in August are the white customers of various unspecified brothels "in the (comparatively speaking) south" (225) who beat Christmas when, after "bedding" one of the white prostitutes, he identifies himself as a Negro (224).
