An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood

“Back in the 1930s, however, Archery was substantial enough to be the center of my world.”

With this statement, Carter establishes how important the family farm was to his sense of self. The family lived near the bigger town of Plains, yet tiny Archery and his father’s multiple farm operations were the “world” to the author and would remain so until he went to high school.

“Our two races, although inseparable in our daily lives, were kept apart by social custom, misinterpretation of Holy Scriptures, and the unchallenged law of the land.”

Carter often contrasts the easy familiarity and friendship between certain members of his family and their Black neighbors with the way they were treated by segregationists. His father was one of the racists who, unlike his wife, would not break social customs such as forcing Black visitors to use the back door of the house. Misinterpretation of Holy Scriptures to justify segregation does not get much treatment in the memoir, but the 1896 Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, which created the “separate but equal” doctrine, is mentioned multiple times as a key factor in The Devastating Impact of Racial Segregation.

“Another legacy of the war was the refusal of white people to accept the children of liberated slaves as legal or social equals.”

Carter attributes the white citizens’ refusal to see their Black neighbors as their equals to lingering resentment about the outcome of the Civil War. His older neighbors remember the way their parents were forced to live during Reconstruction, and their bitterness about the “intrusion” of the Federal government regarding the rights of states and individuals.