Red River

“We been writ out of the history of this town. They got a metal marker down to the courthouse tell a crazy twisting of what really happen Easter Sunday sixty years ago. The ones with the upper hand make the story fit how they want, and tell it so loud people tricked into thinking it real but writing down don’t make it so. The littlest colored child in Colfax, Louisiana, know better than to speak the truth of that time out loud, but real stories somehow carry forward, generation to generation.”

Polly summarizes the issue of the erasure or rewriting of minority history in the Prologue. This history of the black community in Colfax was changed to make the black men the villains and the white mob the heroes. Still, the truth is passed down from father to son in the black community. The book itself functions as the author’s attempt to set the record straight and show the truth of Easter Sunday 1873, as well as the years that followed.

“There is a special way of seeing come with age and distance, a kind of knowing how things happen even without knowing why. Seeing what show up one or two generations removed, from a father to a son or grandson, like repeating threads weaving through the same bolt of cloth. Repeating scraps at the foot and the head of a quilt.” 

Polly has the gift of longevity, which allows her to act as witness to the events of the book and beyond. Due to this perspective, she is able to see the repeating patterns of family history, shown through the Smith and Tademy families, which eventually merge in the character of Ted.

“Making a better way for the children. In the end, making a better life for our children what we all want.” 

Polly calls out the main motivation for many of the characters in the book: to accomplish something for the betterment of future generations. This is a universal impulse, unconnected to race or status, but is something that the black community is consistently denied, just as their equal rights during Reconstruction were revoked.