Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy Who Discovered He Was Black

Williams realizes that to survive he and his brother must find jobs. He ends up working for a drug dealer named Grass as a coal hustler, simply meaning that Williams keeps his inside coal bin full. Williams’s father finds him the job and insists that Williams give him a portion of the money he makes each week, as a “finder’s fee.” Williams realizes that his father cares nothing about his emotions and that no matter how angry he gets with his father, he still goes to bed hungry at night. However, Grass soon goes to prison. Tony hooks Williams up with a relative named Uncle Jim, who has a farm outside of Muncie and wants help delivering groceries and chickens to restaurants around the area.

Williams overhears an encounter between Uncle Jim and one of the white cafe owners, who expresses amazement at Williams’s skin color. It causes Williams to remember a television show in which a Klansman talked about how the evil of integration would result in “mongrel mulattos” (91). Williams realizes that he’s the very person this man railed against, the greatest fear he had. He has no idea why they hate him so much since he has nothing and has done nothing wrong.