Black Boy - Chapter Three

"This was my test. If I failed now, I would have failed at school, for the first trial came not in books, but in how one's fellows took one, what value they placed upon one's willingness to fight."
-Page 91

In Chapter 3, Richard's mother suffers a stroke and he goes to live with his Uncle Clark and Aunt Jody in Greenwood. On his first day of school there, he fights another boy during lunch to prove his worth and become accepted. The theme of education in this chapter deals with both learning from life experience and learning from books. Uncle Clark tells Richard that he is to study every night and he does. He starts earning high marks until the dead boy incident. The type of learning from life is more prominently shown in this chapter, though. The chapter starts with Richard and his gang and how they talked about the racial segregation and the differences between blacks and whites. Richard learns that in the north, race is less of an issue than in the south. In Greenwood, the learning comes more from fitting in with other people. Richard knows that if he did not fight or put up a weak effort, he would have to keep proving himself to the others time after time, which would affect his school work. This is reminiscent of Richard's first experience with a new school when he could not write his name on the board even though he knew how to spell better than most of the other children.