Revolt of The Evil Fairies

The short story “Revolt of The Evil Fairies” by Ted Poston really shows unfairness. The time period for “Revolt of The Evil Fairies” was during segregation in the 1960’s. The setting is this big school play at the Booker T. Washington Colored Grammar School. The protagonist and his fellow classmates at school put on the play Sleeping Beauty. While the students rehearse the play is getting prepared there are clues that show that there is unfairness even within the African American community.

The first example of unfairness is when the children try out for the parts; only the yallers (light skinned kids) get the parts of Prince Charming, Sleeping Beauty and the good fairies. “And there lay my personal tragedy. I made the best grades in my class; I was the leading debater, and the scion of a respected family in the community. But I could never be Prince Charming, because I was black.”-Page 31. This quote really does show unfairness because the dark-skinned kids don’t feel like they can try for the best parts in the play. They shouldn’t feel like if they are a darker color than another kid that they should get treated unfairly.

The second example of unfairness that I found in the story was that the protagonist’s family knew that the school was unfair about giving out the parts. Every time that miss Laprade started to cast parts, the protagonists family started to buy the black clothes because they knew that he would not get the parts he wanted. “In fact, every year when they started casting our grand dramatic offering my family started pricing black cheese cloth at Franklin’s Department Store.” page 31. I think that this is really unfair because the family knows that the protagonist will only be given the part of the evil fairy and they know what is going on and they don’t even try to talk to the school. I also think that the family of the protagonist accepted the discrimination because they don’t want to cause any trouble in the community.

The last example of unfairness that I found was that all of the adults that were yaller got the better jobs. For example, the yallers got all of the teaching jobs, the doctor jobs, and lots of the other well-paid jobs. “The yallers had the best of everything. They held most of the teaching jobs in Booker T. Washington Colored Grammar School. They were Negro doctors, the lawyers, and the insurance men. They even had a Blue Vein Society.” This is really unfair because you could have a person who wants to be a really great doctor and is smart, but he or she wouldn’t get to be a doctor because they were a darker skin color. This also taught me that the yallers only cared about the color of your skin and not about the person inside which I don’t understand because the African Americans are all dark-skinned.

The events of the story demonstrates unfairness within the African American community. All of the lighter skinned African American people were unfair to fellow black members of the community. The protagonist shows his struggles through this unfair time through the play that his school is putting on. This short story really teaches you that unfairness can be avoided by not judging people by the color of their skin. But it takes time as evidenced by the protagonist’s experience. All though he does gain some insight even though he is unsuccessful of gaining the part. Compare what was happening then to now. We have our first African American president! It took a long time for us to do something about this problem. So, if you ever see something like this happening in your daily life, do something. I dare you!