The narrator goes to an unnamed Black college modeled on the Tuskegee Institute, a Black college in Alabama founded by Booker T. Washington. The narrator begins by describing the beauty of the campus:
The buildings were old and covered with vines and the roads gracefully winding, lined with hedges and wild roses that dazzled the eyes in the summer sun. Honeysuckle and purple wisteria hung heavy from the trees and white magnolias mixed with their scents in the bee-humming air.
However, it soon becomes clear that this idyllic description, redolent of the romanticized imagery of Antebellum Southern plantations, is bitter and ironic. The narrator is soon noticing the "tame" rabbits by the side of the road, who have never been hunted, and the ants moving "nervously" in single file, symbols of the college students. The college is an unreal world, financed by white people like Mr. Norton and organized by...
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white ideas of what Black higher education should be like. The invisible narrator can't help but contrast it to the world outside the campus, places filled with "shacks" where disabled veterans sleep with "whores."
The narrator wonders if being in such a sheltered, unreal setting helps or hurts the Black students. He wonders, sometimes, if he was ever there at all. And as he looks at the statue of the college founder, lifting a veil of ignorance, the narrator states:
I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding.
The narrator manages to get himself into trouble by telling Mr. Norton the story of Jim Trueblood, who slept with his daughter and fathered an incestuous daughter. When they meet Jim, Mr. Norton insists on hearing the full story, which nearly kills him—this worries the narrator greatly. At the same time comic and tragic, this episode illustrates the gap between the romantic dreams of the college's white benefactors and the harsh reality of Black life.