Separate Pasts: Growing Up White In The Segregated South

Chapter 3 introduces Clarence Eugene Street, aka Street, an older African American man who is outcast in the community. An eight-year-old McLaurin meets Street when his father hires him for yard work. McLaurin is fascinated by the unusual, well-read man who lives in a makeshift structure that resembles a cave.

McLaurin describes Street’s life before he arrives in Wade. Street is born into a family of tenant farmers in the cotton country of South Carolina. He gets a basic education and marries young. He moves to the North, where there are more opportunities for African American people. He works a variety of jobs in factories, in construction, and as a candy cook. Life in the North has its ups and downs, and Street and his wife turn to religion for comfort. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, a Christian denomination, recruit Street. They preach a message of universal brotherhood that accepts African American people. After his wife dies, Street moves to Wade to preach for the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Conservative evangelical Protestant faiths were the norm in Wade. McLaurin is raised in the Calvinist faith and taught not to ask questions. Street cleverly challenges the received wisdom of Christian thought. McLaurin realizes how afraid the adults in Wade are of anyone questioning anything, and he begins to question the “collective wisdom of the community” (59).