One of the delights of Libby, the free mobile app that enables the download of audio- and e-books from local libraries, is the serendipity of its random-search tool.
A recent such search amid the thousands of novels “available now” (my preference over waiting lists), produced “A Lesson Before Dying,” Ernest Gaines’s mournful, impactful telling of the execution of a young Black man in 1948 in rural Louisiana and his interaction with a local schoolteacher.
I’d read the book when it came out because Gaines was a fellow alum of San Francisco State University, and whatever he wrote was always on my radar. Reading it again three decades later – with my view of race in America at once more hopeful and, of late, more fearful – I appreciate even more the story’s powerful simplicity.
Condemned to die for participating, unwittingly, in a liquor store robbery that resulted in three deaths and labeled in court as no better than a hog, Jefferson retreats emotionally in resentment and anger, cloistering himself in his cell and rejecting visitors.
His godmother implores teacher Grant Wiggins to speak with Jefferson and somehow give him the capacity to rise up and die like a man. Wiggins is reluctant. He does not want to involve himself with local police at a time when just being a Black man with a degree already draws suspicion. But supplicated by his aunt, he agrees.
A deep relationship forms between the two men, rooted in their shared oppression. Trust flourishes even amid the toxicities of Jim Crow and even with the foreknowledge that it faces a hard stop. With patience and persistence, employing a message that death with dignity is a form of resistance, Wiggins draws Jefferson out. On the day of his execution, Jefferson walks tall and straight to the chair.
The sadness of “A Lesson Before Dying” exists on two levels: historical, being the shameful past of American enslavement; and, contemporary, the equally vile durability of racism across the nation and its recent elevation to the most powerful office in the land.
It is more important than ever these days not to forget that legalized racial discrimination and brutal social customs were the norm in the United States within the lifetimes of we Boomers. Reading a novel like “A Lesson Before Dying” helps maintain the freshness of such memories.