One Friday Morning

“Nancy Lee’s drawing was so good, her lines so sure, her colors so bright and harmonious, that certainly no other student in the senior art class at George Washington High was thought to have very much of a chance.”

As a coming-of-age narrative, the central character begins with one set of assumptions but closes with a different set. Here, Nancy Lee is confident. At 17, she is ready for her dreams to come true. She cannot conceive of the scholarship being about anything but talent and promise.

“Nancy Lee sometimes forgot she was colored herself. She liked her classmates and her school.”

Born in the Deep South and proud of her African heritage, Nancy Lee nevertheless has so completely assimilated into her predominantly white high school that she feels accepted, part of the school’s life, an equal to her white peers. She hasn’t yet fully grappled with the disconnect between the promises of the American Dream and the reality of racism in her own life.

“That was the wonderful thing about true creation. You made something nobody else on earth could make—but you.”

Nancy Lee relishes how, as a painter, she can summon entire worlds into existence. Creation for her is power. That concept of the omnipotence of the artist reflects her confidence, her unexamined egotism. As such, this moment foreshadows the crushing epiphany three days later in Miss O’Shay’s office and the story’s thematic engagement with The Reality of Discrimination.