Cotton Comes To Harlem -Post

The main question or complaint I have with this book is why Grave digger and Coffin Ed allowed Calhoun (a white guy) to get away in the end. I know he had to give up the 87 grand but when I think about how much they hunted down Deke it just doesn’t seem right. Calhoun’s greed costs a lot of blacks their lives, where as Deke only swindled people out of their money. Deke is only a pawn in this whole huge mystery but he gets punished like he was the main villain. The only reason I can see for why Calhoun was let free is because of his skin color. It’s like a game when they catch him, the black man can’t really punish the white man so he lets him go. It’s an almost aww shucks we’l let ya go laughing kind of joke. Where as Deke is slapped all around and told hes going to court for murder when he didn’t even kill anyone. Calhoun gets a slap on the wrist and he’s on his way, it just made me mad. Was this intentional by Chester Himes? When he wrote this did he understand that the white villain was getting off easy and the black villain was being unfairly accused? I think it all connects back to the cotton. In the book Alabama refuses to bring Calhoun to authorities because killing a black man isn’t considered murder there. Harlem should be different, it’s in the north, killing a black man should be a crime. But just like how the bale of Cotton makes it’s way to places it shouldn’t belong (the north), unfair laws and overall racism still lingers in the north from the south.