Down By The Riverside: Nature vs Jim Crow

 We can see examples of how the Jim Crow south intensifies the experience of the Mississippi flooding for black people throughout “Down By The Riverside,” and speaks to how the deep racism in the south exacerbated the tragedy experienced. In “Down By The Riverside” there are two forces outside of the narrator's control: the force of nature and the force of racism. Throughout the story, the two powers heavily affect Mann, with the force of racism eventually overpowering him at the end of the story. As a black naturalist story, the power of nature features prominently in the plot of “Down By The Riverside,” and is the driving factor for most of the story.

I think the most prominent scene we see this in is the scene where Mann goes to work on shoring up the levee. It’s right after an emotionally complicated scene for Mann, with his wife and unborn child dying in the hospital directly before. However, when a white man sees Mann, he demands that he go to work on shoring up the levee with sandbags in order to prevent the flooding from getting worse. Once actually at the levee, the description sounds like a direct reference to slavery, saying, “The men in the levee-top moved slowly, like dim shadows. They were carrying heavy bags on their shoulders and when they reached a certain point the bags were dumped down. They then turned around slowly, with bent backs, going to get more bags,” (Wright, 82). This just emphasizes the two forces in the story at war with each other. They need to shore up the levee so that it doesn't break and cause more casualties, but racism causes the white townspeople to choose black people as the workers. In the end of this scene, nature’s force “wins” over racism, with the levee breaking and letting the black people rest. However, putting the black townspeople at the top of the levee when it breaks puts them in more danger, and though it is not explicitly stated, we can assume that the majority of the casualties sustained when the levee breaks were of the black people working to save their home from more damage.

The levee scene also brings to mind the image of slavery, especially in the way Mann describes the workers and the people around the levee when he arrives. The workers are clearly doing back breaking work for no pay, and are not being treated well. This sounds eerily similar to slavery, and was most likely the imagery Weight was looking to evoke when writing this scene. Earlier in the book, another character mentions that some of the black people that had tried to escape shoring up the levee were shot by the white officers standing guard. This also brings to mind slavery, and shows how in times of stress, the racial and social inequities existing in Jim Crow south only serves to hurt the black people living there. This ties in with the Civil Rights movement and it’s call for the abolishment of Jim Crow south, and equal rights no matter your race. In this scene we see how the Jim Crow laws and racism are amplified by the stress of a major natural disaster happening in a community.

I think that the argument could be made that if this story had not existed within the dynamics of the Jim Crow south, maybe Mann’s story would have turned out better for him. It is this argument that makes this story a civil rights story as well as a black naturalist story. Throughout the story we see how racism affects Mann, his family and his community in negative ways, exacerbated by the Jim Crow laws in place at the time. This story is able to make it's argument against Jim Crow without outright stating where it stands, and the depictions of racism and slavery in this story without a happy ending only serves to strengthen their message.