Unnamed Father of Joe Christmas

Joe's biological father is called "a fellow with the circus" who tries to ride off with Milly Hines on a dark rainy night, but is shot and killed by Milly's father (374). He and Milly are together long enough for her to get pregnant. His legacy to his son, who is given the name Joe Christmas in the Memphis orphanage, is the mystery of his own racial identity. Doc Hines is convinced he is a Negro, i.e. in the racist world of segregation, has "nigger blood" (374). Milly apparently tries to tell her parents "the man is a Mexican" (374). On the other hand, during her father's trial for murder, the man who owns the circus testifies that "the man really was a part nigger instead of Mexican" (377). None of these assertions are definitive: the novel deliberately makes his race a mystery that readers cannot solve, and one his son cannot escape.