Summary

Prologue – The never-named narrator of the novel, a black man, explains it may be difficult to believe but he has never stolen or cheated. Having come to Washington D.C. to have his case heard by the Supreme Court, the narrator spends the day before visiting the sights and sounds of the nation’s capital, and overhears a woman calling Baraka the Gorilla “presidential” at the National Zoo. The narrator believes that in America, people are one or the other –citizen or slave, guilty or innocent, and so on. He also reflects on how every race seems to have a motto, and that black people may not need one since all black men seem to have their own individual mottos. The narrator heads to the Supreme Court where he takes a hit of weed and shouts for equal justice...