James Baldwin – Going to Meet the Man

Discussion Questions

1) Roughly, where and when is this story supposed to have taken place?

2) What prevents “Mr. Jesse” from having an erection?

3) What images of African-Americans go through “Mr. Jesse’s” head while he is lying in bed, incapacitated?

4) Do you have a suggestion what the people were registering for when one of them, the “ringleader” got arrested and beaten?

5) What do you think do the following lines refer to? “[A]s he talked, he began to hurt all over with that peculiar excitement which refused to be released.” (p. 258)

6) What is a cattle prod?

7) Why does “Mr. Jesse” want the boy to tell the others in jail to stop singing?

8) Why is “Mr. Jesse” shaking after he knocks out the boy?

9) Why does the boy call “Mr. Jesse” “miserable white mothers?” (259)

10) What happens to “Mr. Jesse” when he is called “white man”?

11) What happens to him that he gets an erection after he (almost?) killed the boy?

12) Why does the singing bother him so much?

13) What does “the posse” Mr. Jesse mentions refer to?

14) On p. 263, Mr. Jesse laments silently about how the loss of the Civil War has cost white Southerners’ “old and easy connection with each other. […] Who could tell when one of them might not betray them all, for money, or for the ease of confession?” What statement does he make here about whiteness? To what extent is it a statement about manhood specifically?

15) The singing ultimately makes him have a flashback. What have been the circumstances of that situation?

16) In this flashback, what is Jesse’s father insinuating repeatedly?

17) What is it that Otis should be reminded of not doing?

18) What event are people going to? What is their anticipation, how are they dressing for it? Why do they take food?

19) What was Jesse’s relationship to Otis?

20) What emotions does Jesse go through when he sees the man being burnt, from the elevated view of his father’s shoulders?

21) What makes Jesse turn from fear to exhilaration in watching the scene unfold?

22) What secret has his father revealed to Jesse?

23) Why is “Mr. Jesse” eventually able to do what he couldn’t do before?

24) What are the connections here between sexuality, domination, masculinity and race?

25) Is Baldwin’s account ‘believable’?

26) Was Lynne Segal wrong?