The Closing Door

Grimke, Angelina W. "The Closing Door." The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader. Ed. David L. Lewis. New York: Viking Penguin, 1994. 486-500. Print.

Wow, this one really hit a chord with me. Good writing plus a powerful, human message; why can’t more of our readings hit on themes of humanity like this? The universal message in this story is probably what makes me like it so much; rather than rambling on about right and wrong, white and black, this story does not once bother to thrust its characters into the oh-so-common montage of political racial discourse. Instead, it tells the story of a family or group of people (I’m not sure if Lucy is related to Agnes) with no real racial motivations one way or another. It’s kind of a breath of fresh air after all of the extremely politically motivated pieces we’ve read.

Until reading this story, I hadn’t realized the extreme differences between the North and the South in terms of the societal acceptance of blacks. Although they point out that lynchings did occur in the North, the overall tone is that the North is a much safer place than the South. I almost got the feeling that the South was an entirely different country by the way that the characters discuss what happened to Joe. It brings back something said in one of the other readings about how blacks tended to live in the South due to the large black population there despite having better opportunities in the North; with this kind of horrible thing as possibility, why would anyone remain in the South? I’m interested in knowing what factors led black people to remain in the South instead of escaping to the relatively easier life of the North.