Chapter 2 Summary

In the second chapter, the narrator is identified as Grant Wiggins, an African American teacher. He returns home after school to find his aunt, Tante Lou, and Jefferson's godmother, Miss Emma, seated at the kitchen table. Jefferson's trial is over. Grant wishes that he could visit the Rainbow Club in Bayonne, but Tante Lou makes him talk with Miss Emma.

Miss Emma begins by stating that the defense attorney's use of the term, "hog," upsets her. She tells Grant that she, "Don't want them to kill no hog. I want a man to go to that chair, on his own two feet." Grant asks Miss Emma and Tante Lou what they think he can do. The women remind Grant that he is a teacher. He responds by saying that he teaches reading, writing and math, but that he has never been told, "how...