Chapter 3 Summary

The chapter opens nine years earlier, in 1917, with Alice Manfred attending a parade with her newly orphaned niece, Dorcas. The cold, dark, silent men are marching to protest the race riots in East St. Louis that killed many blacks and whites, including Dorcas's father, who was pulled off a streetcar by the white crowd and stomped to death. His wife went home to try to forget the color of his entrails on the street, and was burned inside her house the same night. Neighbors ineffectively tried to fight the fire with buckets of water while the shiny new fire truck sat poised a few miles away, waiting for a fire in a white neighborhood.

The silent men march in the parade, carrying banners with promises from the Declaration of Independence on them. They do not trust themselves to speak. Instead, drums beat incessantly...