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Lying in bed, Jesse tells Grace about what happened at work that day—Black civil rights protestors lined up outside the court house in town to register to vote, and Jesse’s coworker Big Jim C. beat and arrested them. That Jesse laughs at Black people fighting for basic rights (and that Grace does not) shows the depths of his racism.
This passage makes it clear that Big Jim C. is a symbol for the Jim Crow laws that upheld segregation in the South. Baldwin’s description that the protestors “wouldn’t stay where Big Jim C. wanted them” is a nod to the…