Alice Walker's short story "The Welcome Table" tells the story of an elderly Black woman who visits a white church somewhere in the Southern United States. She quickly finds that she is very unwelcome there and is physically forced out by several members of the congregation.

Once on the steps outside the church, the old woman begins to sing. Looking down the road, she sees a man approaching who, she concludes, must be Jesus himself. As she follows Jesus down the road, she tells him her story of how she worked for white people all her life only to receive constant ingratitude. Now that she has Jesus as her companion, she is happy and hopeful. She walks on,

not know[ing] where they were going; someplace wonderful; she suspected. The ground was like clouds under their feet, and she felt she could walk forever without becoming the least bit tired.

The congregants of the white church never speak about the woman again, even though she is soon found dead along the road, having walked to her death on that cold Sunday morning.

This story highlights the hypocrisy of white communities that profess moral goodness and kindness but reserve it only for themselves. There is a sense of irony in this story's title. The welcome table that the Black woman had hoped to find in the church was not there. This church is no sanctuary, either from the cold or the hard life she has lived. The welcome table, in her case and for so many like her, is only to be found after death.