Section 3: Southern Migrations to Washington, D.C.
Movement away from the South does not always mean people leave Southern beliefs, traditions, and mannerisms behind. The South remains with these characters even as they leave their homes behind to move to D.C. and continues to be an important part of them, whether they appreciate their southern roots or were attempting to run from them.
In “Adam Robinson Acquires Grandparents and a Little Sister”, Noah Robinson “...still had the gentlemanly quality of the countrified South about him,” despite having moved to D.C.from South Carolina with his family when he was only seven (Jones 241). Noah Robinson, never losing his Southern manners, demonstrates how those traditions and manners remain with the people who move away from the South long after they do so.
Some people, however, move to D.C. in order to get away from the South and distance themselves from the lives they once lived. In Blindsided, Roxanne Stapleton, who had moved to D.C. from Louisiana, observes a woman on the bus with “a southern accent so thick it insulted Roxanne’s ears” and thinks about how she herself had worked to eradicate her own accent so no one would be able to tell where she came from (Jones 294). Roxanne working to eliminate her accent and distance herself from her Southern past demonstrates how some people who move to D.C., despite having family and roots in the South, still do not want to have any connection to where they came from.
The theme of characters moving from the South to Washington D.C. is prevalent throughout the collection and points to the fact that the community of African Americans in D.C. was growing and expanding, as people from all different walks of life came to settle together, bringing aspects of the South they had left behind with them and combining it with the culture of African Americans they found in D.C., creating a new culture for the black community in D.C.
Sometimes, no matter how far characters get from the South, the South always pulls at them to return. In the story of Root Worker, Dr. Glynnis Holloway takes her mother to see a root worker in North Carolina when modern medicine is unable to help her. Glynnis’ family had originally moved to D.C. from North Carolina when she was born, and her mother’s nurse tells her that “…sometimes black people from the South need to go back home,” that they “leave, [they] run away and don’t realize how much [they’ll] need to go back home one day” (177). Though Glynnis has lived her entire life in D.C., there is still some part of her that remains connected to the South.
Many of the characters throughout the stories are both deeply religious and extremely superstitious as both notions go hand in hand for many of the characters. The rituals involved in both religious and superstitious practices work to reconcile the two ways of thinking and allow characters from the religious and superstitious, from the South and D.C. to coexist. In the story "In the Blink of God’s Eye", Aubrey’s father encourages him to attend church and tells him, “it’s but a little bit outa your whole life, son…And God has a long memory” (Jones 4). This moment between father and son helps demonstrate how important religion is in the lives of these people, and how a bit of superstition creeps into their religious activities. The way Aubrey’s father frames attending church seems as though taking the small trouble to attend church is, in itself a ritual of insurance, just in case God should notice and remember. Religion is not only like a ritual for the characters of Jones’ stories, something to believe in, but it is also a set of rules to follow.
The stories characters that tell, the beliefs they hold, and the actions they take, shape what kinds of people they are. Jones uses all three of these things to shape the characters of his short stories into what he views as accurate representations of people who come to D.C. from the South and the Southern beliefs and traditions they bring with them. The blending of religious and superstitious beliefs mold the people who live in D.C. into the kinds of people who can easily merge the two forms of belief into one coherent system that incorporates both the worship of faith and the ritual of the supernatural.
