38 pages • 1 hour read
Separate Pasts: Growing Up White In The Segregated South
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Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Street”
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). Street becomes a mentor to McLaurin, who suspects “that Street was the most intelligent person in the village” despite his race (50). His recognition that Street is more intelligent challenges the entire system of segregation, which holds that white people are more intelligent. As an adult, McLaurin contextualizes the limitations and contradictions in Street’s natural intelligence.
Chapter 3 Analysis
McLaurin introduces an important emerging theme: the questioning of received wisdom. In Chapter 2, McLaurin realizes he has internalized the racial codes of segregation. In Chapter 3, we meet the person who teaches McLaurin to ask why things are the way they are. Unlike most members of the community, Street welcomes questions and debate. He has little formal education, and there are limitations and contradictions in the doctrines he preaches. However, he is curious and willing to question social and religious norms. Everyone else in the community seems oblivious to the hypocrisy of many of their beliefs. Street teaches McLaurin to use his own mind.
Religion, in particular the conservative Protestant orthodoxy of the South, structures daily life. Street challenges both his religious beliefs and the belief in the racial superiority of white people. McLaurin is deeply affected by the realization that Street pities the ignorance of white citizens. McLaurin begins to understand that African American people do not see whites as their superiors. His encounters with Street begin to shake his belief in segregation, as Street’s “quest for knowledge” make him an “intellectual superior” to the rest of the community (52). We witness McLaurin notice that segregation might not be as natural as people understand, observing his growing awareness as we watch the social world of the South slowly change.
McLaurin uses Street as an example of the costs of segregation. A racist society limited Street from contributing his immense potential to the world. McLaurin recalls an English teacher describing “some mute inglorious Milton” (63), making McLaurin immediately think of Street. Society was lesser because Street was not able to contribute his full potential to the world.
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