by Eudora Welty

Bom in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1909, Eudora Welty is deeply immersed in the culture and history of the South. Though raised in an upper-middle-class white family, she traveled extensively throughout the South during the Depression, working for the Works Progress Administration, and learned firsthand the plight of its impoverished black residents. In "A Worn Path" Welty provides a glimpse of the hard life of a poor Southern black woman who must confront both white society and the rapid urban growth and technological advancement of America around the turn of the twentieth century.

Events in History at the Time the Short Story Takes Place

Rural South. At the turn of the twentieth century, Jackson, Mississippi, was an area rife with divisions. As in other areas of the Deep South, segregation, racism, and poverty continued to dominate African American life, the way they had...