by Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor (1925-64) was bom in Savannah, Georgia, to a middle-class Catholic family, and devoted her literary career to portraying the culture of the South with all of its macabre social and religious tensions. "Everything that Rises Must Converge" dramatizes civil rights activism surrounding public transportation in the South and the strong undercurrent of violence that runs beneath race relations in the region. O'Connor wrote the short story near the end of her life; she had long suffered from lupus and died of kidney failure on August 3, 1964.

Events in History at the Time of the Short Story

Freedom rides. O'Connor's "Everything that Rises Must Converge" concerns an interracial encounter on a city bus. The modem era of civil rights history in the United States is often referred to as beginning on December 1, 1955. On that day, an...