Chapter H homecoming summary PDF

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Summary of the Chapter H of the book homecoming...

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H -

Police put H in chains against his futile protests Rattles bars of his cell while his cellmate tells him to stop or they might kill him  H asks what his crime is his cellmate explains that theey said he was “studying white woman” named Cora hobbs  He said he didn’t do it but his cellmate says that it doesn’t matter whether he was it or not  He says even though slavery and the war are over the struggles are still not over

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H thinks about the day the war had ended when he was about 13  He left his masters plantation and walked from Georgia to Alabama  He was happy to be free but it hadn’t lasted long  H spent the next four days in the county jail  They wont tell him his charge only that he has to pay ten dollars by the end of the night  But he doesn’t have money or fam

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H had been eighteen when he met Ethe  His relationship with her had been his longest relationship with anyone  He thinks about calling her but she hasn’t spoken to him since he’d said another woman’s name by mistake He also worries that if she came to the jail she would be taken into a back room by the policemen and told there are other ways to pay a fine which he had heard happened before

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Unable tol pay the fine the next day in July 1880  H is chained to ten other men and sold by the state of Alabama to work in the coal mines  One of the men he is chained to is really no more than aboy of twelve who pees himself as he is pushed in front of the pit boss  H is sold for 19 dollars a month while he struggles against his shackles and shouts that he is a free man

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The first 1000 pounds of coal are hardest to shovel and H spends hours and days on his knees  His arms burn but he knows the pain is only one thing that can kill him  The warden hard also whipped a man until he died and the mines have sometimes collapsed burying prisoners alive  Dust explosions could also wipe out men by the hundred

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H can hardly remember being free and he tries to remember Ethe

 The convicts in the mines are almost all like him : former slaves  Occasionally one of the wardens would bring in a white man who would protest being chained to a black man until he realized that he needed the other convicts down there in the mines -

At one point H partnered with a white man named Thomas whose arms start shaking so badly he can’t lift the shovel during his first week H takes up Thomas’s shovel and fills both men’s quotas shoveling with both hands  The next day H can’t feel his arms and he tells his friend Joecy that he doesn’t want to die

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That morning H is partnered with Thomas again  He tries to lift his shovel but can’t  Joecy his partner Bull and Thomas all start to shovel a pile fo H’s quota  At the end of the day Thomas thanks him for his help from the day before

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Thomas asks H abour his name  H explains that his mother Anna called him H before she gave birth  She then killed herself and the owners of the plantation had to cut him out of her stomach before she died  Thomas doesn’t respond  A month lather Thomas dies of Tubervulosis

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H shovels his last thousand pounds of coal in 1889  He thinks about going home but he doesn’t really know where home is  He walks as far as he can enters the first bar he sees with black people  He starts speaking to a woman named Dinah who is visiting Birmingham

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Another man joins their conversation saying H looks really strong  The man asks him to roll up his sleeve  H rolls it up to show his muscle but then the man notices something else  He tugs on H sleeve and his whole shirt falls apart revealing the fresh whip scars on his back  The man tells Dinah that H is one of the convicts from the mines  Dinah goes to stand on the other side of the bar

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H moves to Pratt City a twon made up of ex cons  He meets up with Joecy who had also moved out to Pratt city  Joecy tells H to try to contact Ethe and asks his son Lil Joe to write a letter for H but H refuses  The next morning H goes with Joecy and gets a job working in a mine as a free laborer

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Life in Pratt city is unlike anything H had experienced before  With black and white people living next door to each other  H gets paid sometimes forty dollars in a single month  He moves in with Joecy and his wife Jane for a bit before starting to build his own house  When Joecy asks him to join the union H is nervous about it but relents

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H sits in the back at his first union meeting while a doctor explains some of the negative side effect of being in the mines like black lung  The doctor says that they should fight for shorter hours and better ventilation but H says that they should be fighting for more money  The doctor counter that mining could be safer than it is and that lives are worth fighting for too

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H starts to feel very aware of his own mortality and the kind of life he is building for himself  After the meeting he coughs and coughs as he walks to Joecy’s house  He asks Lil Joe to write a letter for him telling Ethe that he is free and in Pratt City

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At the next union meeting a white member says that theys should strike  H who has become more vocal at the meetings explains that white people barely listen to black people and that no one would pay attention  The white union member says that they have to work together  H agrees to the strike

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The next day the union members give their bosses a list of demands but the bosses simply answer that free miners can be easily replaced by convicts appears all under the age of 16  H worries that they are arresting more people simply to get more workers

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The members make signs and picket outside the mines  H sees one boy pee himself waiting for the mine shaft before trying to run away  A gunshot quickly goes off  The people on strike break the line swarming the white bosses  H grabs a man by the throat and holds him over the mine pit  He stops himself from throwing the man down

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After six months the bosses give in to paying 50 cents more  After the union meeting where the raise is announced H returns home to find Ethe waiting for him cooking greens  She says that when she received his letter she let two months go by thinking about what she wanted to do

 She tells him how upset she’d been when he’d called her by another woman’s name and didn’t know what to do when she found out he’d been locked up for a crime he didn’t commit -

H doesn’t respond simply taking Ethe’s body in his arms as she cooks  She doesn’t give in wso easily  She doesn’t lean into him until the pot has been scraped clean...