Between the World and Me

Coates travels to New Jersey to visit Prince Jones’s mother, Dr. Mable Jones. He finds her composed yet somber, living in an affluent community. Dr. Jones tells Coates about her experience growing up poor in Opelousas, Louisiana, the same place where her ancestors were enslaved. Jones recalls being ushered to the back of the bus by her mother when she attempted to sit up front as a child. Coates wonders when Samori first understood the “chasm” between himself and his white peers (134). Dr. Jones became class president of her high school, went to medical school, and eventually became the only black doctor in her practice. Prince, in contrast, attended private schools his whole life. Coates writes of black students growing up in predominately white, privileged neighborhoods: “They were symbols and markers, never children or young adults” (139). Tired to being a symbol, Prince chose to attend Howard rather than one of the Ivy League schools his mother urged him to attend. When Coates asks Dr. Jones if she regrets Prince going to Howard, she replies, “No […] I regret that he is dead” (139).

Coates, his wife, and Samori attend homecoming at Howard University. Coates recalls looking out at the football game and seeing representation from all corners of the African diaspora. He reflects, “That was a moment, a joyous moment, beyond the Dream—a moment imbued by a power more gorgeous than any voting rights bill” (145). He argues that even “the Dreamers” feel the impact of black power in the world, from listening to Billie Holiday when they are sad to requesting to hear Aretha Franklin on their deathbeds. Coates affirms the legacy of black culture, writing, “We have taken the one-drop rules of Dreamers and flipped them. They made us into a race. We made ourselves into a people” (146).

Coates ends the book by urging his son Samori to struggle, to not help the Dreamers but to pursue knowledge, wisdom, and community for himself.