Whistling Past the Graveyard

Crandall sets Whistling Past the Graveyard in the summer of 1963 in the Southern United States. This setting connects the story to the civil rights movement, which began in the 1950s. The movement occurred when Black people and white allies began emphatically protesting Southern laws and policies that made Black people unequal. As Starla notices throughout the book, Southern society wanted to segregate the races and preserve the racial hierarchy that took root before the Civil War (1861-65) and the abolition of slavery. Black people had to use different water fountains and bathrooms, and they couldn’t visit the same businesses and establishments as white people. In the book, on the bus to Nashville, the driver suggests a diner that doesn’t serve Black people.

Summarizing the goals of the civil rights movement, Cyrena tells Starla, “We want Negros—all people—to have all of the same choices available as whites” (243). The change wasn’t peaceful, with white people violently trying to preserve the bigoted status quo. In Chapter 11, Starla alludes to the tumult when she remembers watching Alabama police use firehouse activists and a riot at Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) after the enrollment of its first Black student, James Meredith. Cyrena addresses the havoc when she tells Starla, “[I]t’s very bad at the moment” (242).

Neither Starla nor Eula directly participates in the civil rights movement, with Eula declaring, “I ain’t brave like them folks. ‘Sides, I done all the fightin’ I want to do in this lifetime” (489). Still, the historical backdrop shows how the activism impacts these characters, nonetheless. By focusing on Starla and Eula, Crandall reveals the link between the personal and the political. In their daily lives, they experience the period’s dangerous instability through characters like the Jenkins brothers. The story shows how history impacts people even when they’re not directly involved in making it.