Chapter 5 Summary

Jody and Janie are surprised to find that Eatonville, the black town near Maitland, is nothing but a little hole on a hundred acres with no mayor and nothing but a few rough houses in the sand. Jody complains it is just as he thought—a lot of talk and nothing being done. He quickly rents a house and buys two hundred more acres from Mr. Eaton, the man in Maitland who donated the first hundred. Then he rallies the men of the town, buying lumber and charging them to build roads. He hires two to build him a store, which he fills with goods and uses to hold town meetings, and soon the men unanimously elect him to be mayor. He adds a post office to the store and buys a street lamp to drive away the dark, inviting people from all...