Ghost
Denver Moore explains, “There was lots of Emmett Tills, only most of em didn’t make the news .Folks says the bayou in Red River Parish is full to its pea-green brim with the splintery bones of colored folks that white men done fed to the gators for coveting their women, or maybe just lookin cross-eyed. Wadn’t like it happened ever day. But the chance of it, the threat of it, hung over the cotton fields like a ghost.” The allegorical ghost accentuates the ubiquity of black repression. Being black increases the probabilities of being executed, for the ‘black males’ are not predicted to be involved with the ‘white females’.
Kennedy
Denver Moore recalls, “It might be hard for you to imagine , but I worked like that while the seasons rolled by from the time I was a little bitty boy, all the way pas the time that president named Kennedy got shot in Dallas.” Kennedy’s clear-cut historical allusion postulates the years when the speaker withstands enslavement. Referring to Kennedy’ shooting indicates that slavery was still endemic in the USA (explicitly Louisiana) during the 1960’s.
Cotton
Ron Hall elucidates, “Granddaddy hired lots of colored folks, and few white men to help farm his cotton.” Cotton is illustrative of a material commercial resource. The cotton agrarians accumulate ample proceeds from it, since it is processed into usable consumables.
