Unnamed Negro Voters 1

Faulkner relates the time Colonel John Sartoris prevented a group of newly emancipated Negroes from voting in three different texts. In the first, Flags in the Dust, the event is described by Will Falls, who witnessed it "that day in '72" - i.e. 1872 (242). The second time, in "Skirmish at Sartoris" and The Unvanquished, the event is recounted by the Colonel's son Bayard, who witnessed it as an adolescent. Both Falls and Bayard describe the event from an unreconstructed 'Southern' perspective: Falls refers to the men who are trying to exercise their new constitutional right to vote as "nigger voters" (242), and Bayard calls them a "herd of niggers" (69, 206); in every case denying them the vote is seen as a victory.