Gold Piece

"Alone to herself, she looked at the thing with loathing,but look she must. She took it into her hands with trembling and saw first thing that it was no gold piece. It was a gilded half dollar. Then she knew why Slemmons had forbidden anyone to touch his gold. He trusted village eyes at a distance not to recognize his stick-pin as a gilded quarter, and his watch as a four-bit piece." pg.994

 As Slemmons comes into town wearing his fancy suit and glittering gold teeth, Joe reveres him to be one notch lower than a rich white man. As Missie May sees Joe's desire for wealth and respect, she sleeps with Slemmons in order to try to get some gold. However, the plan backfires on her when she sees that the gold Slemmons has is all fake. The situation came out to be extremely ironic, because as she tries to secure her husbands happiness, she ends up losing it and her self respect for an imitation. This comes to show how the African Americans had to deal with social success, or lack of, at the time. For as hard as they tried, and for as much money they made, wealth was all an illusion. They were still stuck at the bottom, dealing with preconceived notions of wealth and success through the lens of white Americans. The only thing they could count on in the end, Joe realizes, was each other.

Do you think it would have made a difference if Slemmons was portrayed as a white man? What if Joe and Missie had been or a different race?