The Illustrated Man

On Mars, Hattie Johnson and her three sons hear that a rocket is coming. It is piloted by a white man. The children have never seen a white man before; Hattie herself was only a young girl when she lived on Earth in 1965. The children are excited, but Hattie is nervous. She explains how the black community had left Earth for Mars 20 years ago. Afterwards, the white men had destroyed Earth in an atomic war, along with the rocket technology needed to escape it. It had taken them 20 years to rebuild.

Excited, the Martian community is gathering—they claim they just want to see the man. When Hattie is concerned they’ll lynch him, they chide her. Hattie’s husband Willie arrives; he is angry, collecting her and heading home to get his gun. He reminds Hattie that white people had lynched his father on Knockwood Hill and shot his mother. Willie says, “[T]he shoe’s on the other foot now. We’ll see who gets laws passed against him, who gets lynched, who rides the back of streetcars, who gets segregated in shows” (41). He digs in their attic for his guns; “she couldn’t see him at all, he was so dark” (42).