Uncle Tom's Children Book Summary

Uncle Tom’s Children is a book to describe the life of blacks though a part named The Ethics of Living Jim Crow and five separate fictional stories.
In the first part, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow, the writer is fighting a war in cinder with several white boys. Because white boys have some places to hide, but the writer doesn’t, Wright is injured by broken bottle. When he meets his mother, his mother beat him, rather than comfort him. “she would smack my rump with the stave, and while the skin was still smarting, impart to me gems of Jim Crow wisdom.” This is first lesson to Wright that black should act differently than normal people, or even act against instincts.
When Wright go to work, the boss told him to learn something here, but when he is going to seek opportunities to learn, his white coworkers warn him that he is black after all, and do not deserve to learn, then Wright reply politely. One day, he is framed that he does not call a white guy with “Mr.”, but he is black, so he cannot explain for himself but scuttle away, and never come back again as warned. When Wright is working in a store, he witnesses his boss and boss’s son drug a black woman into the store and beat her violently for inability to pay bills. The only thing Wright can do is standing there. After beating that poor
Wright was threaten by this reason. When white people making an insulting joke to a black couple, this couple are supposed to laugh. “if you were in their presence when this explanation was offered, you were supposed to laugh.” Author summarize the experience in hotel with following word, “…I said with as much heartiness as I could muster…the life of hotel ran with an amazing smoothness. It would have been impossible for a stranger to detect anything. The maid, the hall-boy, and the bell-boys were all smiles. They have to