Unnamed Neighbors of Minnie Cooper

In "Dry September" over time Minnie Cooper's only social contacts become the women who live in her neighborhood - identified as both "neighbors" and "friends" in the text (175, 180). She occasionally goes to movie with them. While the lynching is going on outside town, a group of them take her to another movie, walking through the streets with her, reassuring her with "voices" that sound "like long, hovering sighs of hissing exultation" that "'there's not a Negro on the Square'" (181). At the end of the story, after Minnie breaks down in the theater, they take her home - and at least one of them wonders if "anything really happened" (182).