A Party Down at the Square

"A Party Down at the Square" is a short story by the American writer Ralph Ellison, first published in 1997, three years after the author's death.

Despite the mayhem of the storm and plane landing, the mob turns its focus back on the young black man who is getting burned to death.

When the black man politely asks for a quick death, Jed Wilson, a leader of the lynch mob, refuses, saying, "...ain't no Christians around tonight."

Ellison uses the word to get the reader to grasp a deeper understanding of the racist mindset because it has helped deeply ingrain racism into the thought processes of the narrator.

The word dehumanizes the lynch mob victim, which makes "A Party Down at the Square" a powerful indictment of the history of Southern racism.