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In "The Flowers," what indicates that the dead man is black?
Quick answer:
In "The Flowers," the dead man's race is inferred rather than explicitly stated. Historical context suggests he is black, as the presence of a noose and the setting in the American South, a region known for lynchings of black men, imply racial violence. The man wears overalls, typical for black men in servitude roles during that era. Additionally, Alice Walker's focus on African American characters supports this interpretation.
This story is about Myop's loss of innocence, driven by her realization that the world is not kind to black people, like herself. We are explicitly told that Myop has "dark brown" skin. While the dead man she stumbles upon has seemingly no skin left to comment upon, the importance of this discovery to Myop implies immediately that this is a black man.
The primary textual indication, sadly, that the man is black is the remains of the noose which Myop discovers next to the body. Walker does not elaborate on the significance of what Myop has found, but it is expected that the reader will draw an immediate connection between this noose and the lynchings that took place during this period in time—white people would kill black people by hanging. While a man in blue overalls might have been a white working-class man, such a man would not have...
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been lynched. If he had been hanged, it would have been by the state, which would have buried him appropriately, not left him to rot in the woods. Only a black man is likely to have been killed, and abandoned, in this way.
Interestingly, in Alice Walker's short story "The Flowers", there is no literal indication of the dead man's race. However, using historical and authorial context, the reader can draw the conclusion that he is black.
Historical Context: Myop, the protagonist, lives in a "sharecropper cabin", which places this story between the 1860s and 1940s, during which time sharecropping was a common practice in the American South. Given this information, the reader can also intuit other common cultural practices of this stated time period. Following slavery, the South underwent a rampant persecution of black men, including commonplace lynchings. The presence of a noose, overalls (common clothing for black men in the South, who were relegated to social positions of servitude), and this stated historical context, the reader can deduce that the victim of the lynching was most likely black.
Authorial Context: Alice Walker is an African American woman, most of whose characters are black. Therefore, the reader could make the connection to her other works and surmise that he could likely be black.