Friendship

            
             After the emancipation of slavery in the South, the relationships between blacks and whites became complex. Before the emancipation of slavery it was clear to all that the whites were the superior beings. After the emancipation of slavery the relationships between blacks and whites stayed similar except in the younger generations. Now with blacks having more rights whites were puzzled on how they should be treated. Children had the most problems figuring out how to treat the blacks. During the youth of Harry Crews, Jimmy Carter, and Jim Glass they all encounter different situations were they come to question their parent's ideas on the treatment of blacks. .
             During Harry Crews youth, he is told that he is a superior to blacks but deep down he realizes they are the same as him. Harry Crews was a young white boy who lived with his mom, brother, and father on a tobacco tenant farm in the South. Harry Crews was not old enough to work on the farm so he spent his days playing in the shade under the oak tree watching his mom, his brother, and Willalee Bookatee pick the worms off the plants. Willalee was the son of the black family who helped work the farm. Willalee however knew his place in the relationship, "Willalee almost never argued with what I decided to do, up to and including giving away the worms he had spent all morning collecting." (396) The story suggested that Harry, being a young boy, could not comprehend why Willalee was not allowed to eat at his house while he could go over to his freely. Harry saw Willalee as an equal but "there was another part of me in which it had to matter because it mattered to the world I live!.
             d in. It mattered to my blood."(401) The day Harry learned Willalee was a nigger was a vivid memory in his life. Until his aunt told him to call black people nigger Jones instead of Mr. Jones he had never noticed a difference and thought that they were just the same.