The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

This icon represents the "young girls" who are "terrified" by the gang that Clarence Snopes leads (89).

Only one member of Clarence Snopes' gang is mentioned separately: his "lieutenant," the "second-in-command in the old gang" (89). He is not described in more detail, but when he "tries to take advantage of their old relationship" after Snopes becomes a constable, Snopes' treatment of him is described as "ruthless and savage" (130).

Although in other Yoknapatawpha fictions the population of Frenchman's Bend is almost entirely white, local Negroes appear in this story in two ways. The "roistering gang" that Clarence Snopes leads frequently "beats Negroes" (89). When Clarence becomes the Bend's constable, he also hits the "first few Negroes who ran afoul of his new official capacity . . . with the blackjack he carried or the butt of the pistol which he now officially wore" (89).

Before he entered government, Clarence Snopes was the "leader of a roistering gang of cousins and toadies who fought and drank and beat Negroes and terrified young girls" (89). In a later paragraph the narrator suggests they beat blacks because, unconsciously, they were afraid of blacks "as a race" (89).

Readers of The Snopes Trilogy know that the narrator's "new aunt," the woman who marries his Uncle Gavin, is named Melisandre Backus (88).

George Washington Carver was an early 20th century Negro scientist and inventor who promoted crops, especially peanuts and sweet potatoes, as alternatives to cotton. The principal of Jefferson's Negro school mentions him when talking with Gavin about Linda Snopes' efforts to reform education for the country's black children (248).

African-American leader and an educator who created a series of vocational schools for African-Americans, most prominently the Tuskegee Institute. The black principal of the "Negro grammar and high school" (246) cites Washington as agreeing with his position against the way Linda Snopes is trying to reform the racial status quo.

Varner orders "the local J.P." - the justice of the peace, a kind of judge whose jurisdiction is limited - to name Snopes his constable (89).

These "properly-educated white teachers" appear in the novel as an idea: they are the teachers whom Linda Snopes Kohl wants Jefferson to hire to instruct the students who attend the town's "Negro school" (250).

In "By The People" the "People" are seen through several different lenses. For example, Gavin Stevens and his nephew, the narrator, divide them generationally: Gavin refers to "the ones of my age and generation" (133), and the narrator, to "the ones of my age and time" (134). In either case, however, the "people" evoked are white.