As our introduction to African -American literature, we discussed the novel's setting, 1940s southern Louisiana .After providing some biographical information about the author, we examined the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause, its negation by the 1891 Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson, and the 14th Amendment's resurrection ,in part, by the Court's 1954 decision of Brown vs Board of Education. I defined the phrase "Jim Crow" laws, and explained that the novel is set in the 1940s prior to the Brown vs Bd.Of Education case ,and as such in the South, segregation was at the time legal and accepted. We further discussed other social issues impacting the African-American community such as the inequitable imposition of the death penalty on persons of color, and the disparity in legal representation for poor criminal defendants. We noted how this disparity in financial resources can ignore racial lines as exemplified by the OJ Simpson case . Last, I provided vocabulary definitions including words with a particular meaning to the southern Louisiana culture such as "plantation-farm, quarter-neighborhood, parain - godfather." I further provided background on the main characters in the novel as well as the historical basis for the influence of French culture in Louisiana. For homework, read chapters 1 and 2 and answer study guide questions.