A good example of a black character that is good would be Mr. Morrison, He comes to the Logan’s because he lost his job and papa wanted a strong man to protect his family while he was working on the tracks. Early on in the story he broke up a fight with T.J and Stacey and does not discipline Stacey’s actions beyond the fact that they have been told not go to the Wallace store, Stacey did not at first like him but he gave Stacey the chance to tell mama her self, and as Mr. Morrison treated Stacey like a man, in response Stacey acted like a man and told mama what he had done.
Mr. Morrison had super strength with a lot of courage to go with it, for example, when the night men came to ambush papa on the way back from Vicksburg for boycotting the Wallace store, but Mr. Morrison beats two of them up badly.
A good example of a white character that is good is Mr. Jamison; He is the local lawyer and is very sympathetic to the black community. His kind hearted and respects the black people for example when he talks to the black woman he addresses them as ‘ma'am’. He also tried to help the Logan family boycott the Wallace store by providing credit for any black person wanting to shop in Vicksburg, but consequences of helping the families boycott the Wallace store would result in Harlan Granger. He decides to take sixty rather than fifty percent of his sharecroppers' cotton and threatens to kick out those who continue the boycott. Even at the end of the story he tries to protect T.J, he argued with the mob and even put his car in the middle of the road to block the cars from driving away
A further example of a good white character that is good in the story is Jeremy Simms; Jeremy had always walked with the Logan children to the crossroads on the way to school and after school.
Lillian Jean was white and she was Jeremy’s sister, she had always ridiculed him and made fun on him for walking with the Logan children. Lillian Jean had always insulted Cassie, for instance when Cassie was in strawberry and she bumped into Lillian jean by accident but even after Cassie had apologised she pushes her in to road. Mildred Taylor shows Lillian Jean to be a bad character by using racism “Maybe that way you won’t go bumping into decent white folks”, which is really just saying white people are better than black people.
Another example of white characters that are bad are R.W and Melvin Simms, they are about eighteen or nineteen years old, they pretend to be T.J’s friend, but behind his back they would call him names and laugh at him. Towards the end of the story R.W and Melvin take T.J to help them break in to the Barnett store to steal the gun T.J had wanted, but they actually wanted to take the money in the safe but when Mr. Barnett came down stairs he just saw T.J and assumed that R.W and Melvin were black because they had their face covered. R.W and Melvin kill Mr. Barnett by hitting him with an axe on the head and they injured Mrs. Barnett, and T.J had threatened to tell of them but they severely beat him up and then frame him by saying they saw him running away from the Barnett store, and they had driven to the pool hall and had an alibi there. R.W and Melvin lead the mob to T.J and they break in to the Avery house and try to kill him.
