Not Without Laughter

Also called “Aunt Hager,” Hager is the matriarch of the Williams family. Born into slavery, Hager emphasizes the importance of loving whites despite the negative impact of racism on the lives of African Americans. Hager is a stalwart of her community because of her acts of charity and in her family because her work as a laundress is frequently the only source of income for her family.

The other important element of Hager’s character is her faith. She inculcates the values of honesty, thrift, and hard work in Sandy by her example and her discipline (sometimes physical) of him. Her values mean that, in practice, she is more focused on the future, whether that future is the better one she imagines for Sandy or a more distant one in the afterlife. Although these traits allow Hager to maintain her family, they also are a source of rigidity that drives away Harriet and that makes her ignore self-care to the extent that she works herself to death.

The youngest of Hager’s daughters, Harriet is only sixteen at the start of the novel and eager to escape the rigid confines of her mother’s house and Kansas. Harriet is described as slender, pretty, and gifted in her ability to sing and dance. Harriet is keenly aware of the negative impact of racism in her life and hates whites as a result. Harriet’s actions throughout the novel show her increasingly bold efforts to escape Kansas and the limitations of racism.

Her initial efforts—running away with a carnival and later becoming a sex worker who is arrested for prostitution—show just how limited her options are. By the end of the novel, however, Harriet manages to capitalize on her talents by becoming a celebrated blues singer. Her character arc—from failure to success, from stagnation to mobility—makes her a prime example of African Americans who entered the Great Migration in search of greater opportunities.

The eldest of Hager’s daughters and Sandy’s mother, Annjee works as a domestic in a white woman’s house. For the most part, Annjee embraces the same values as her mother, including her emphasis on the importance of work and faith and her refusal to aggressively counter white racism.

Unlike her mother, however, Annjee places a greater value on the present and her relationship with her husband. This emphasis on the present means that she wants her son to work instead of continuing his education, while her focus on her relationship with Jimboy means that she sometimes neglects her son.

Tempy is Hager’s middle daughter; she is the character in the novel that most exemplifies the promise and peril of racial uplift. By following the example of a white activist for whom she serves as a personal assistant and using the property gifted to her by her employer, Tempy is able to escape the poverty in which her mother raised her.

Tempy’s major motivation throughout the novel is to become a respectable black person worthy of the respect of whites, whom she both hates and desires to become like. Tempy fosters Sandy after the death of Hager. While Sandy comes to despise her hatred for ordinary African Americans, her insistence on the importance of education in his life proves crucial to his success.

Sandy’s father and Annjee’s husband, Jimboy is light-skinned, handsome, and seemingly incapable of staying put with his family or holding on to a job for very long. His easy-going ways are in stark contrast to Hager’s moral uprightness/rigidity, so the two are in constant conflict when he is around. He is frequently absent and thus he plays a relatively minor role in the upbringing of his son. Jimboy is also a talented musician who teaches Harriet and his son about important popular and folk music from African-American culture.

A close neighbor of the Williams family, Sister Johnson attends the same church as Hager and embraces some of the same values. Her family was among those African Americans driven out of their homes at the turn of the century, so (unlike Hager) she has a passionate hatred for whites. 

Another neighbor of Hager’s, Madame de Carter’s defining characteristic is her bungling attempt to use elevated speech to impress her neighbors. She is nevertheless an important figure in her community because of her generosity and her involvement in a benevolent fraternal organization that eventually leads her to join the Great Migration.

Sandy's first schoolboy crush, Pansetta is an attractive girl from the Bottoms. Sandy's innocent affection for her is interrupted when Tempy warns him that she is only out to trap him by getting pregnant. Sandy's decision to distance himself from her leads to her romantic and sexual relationship with Jimmy Lane, bearing out in part Tempy's accusation that she is promiscuous but also showing the cost of Tempy’s decision to keep Sandy ignorant about matters of sex and romance.

Maudel is a pretty, laughing girl who lives in the Bottoms (the working-class part of town) and is frequently Harriet’s partner as the two sneak out to socialize and eventually become sex workers. 

A childhood friend of Sandy, Buster is a blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who is identified as African American only because of the rigidity of early twentieth-century, American ideas about race. His decision to pass leads Sandy to question these ideas about racial purity.

Arkins is Tempy’s husband and male equivalent due to his emphasis on materialism and his explicit rejection of African-American culture as inferior. He is a respected member of striving African Americans in Stanton because he is the only African American with a government job.