Isom Strother

Isom is Elnora's only child in Flags in the Dust, "a negro lad lean and fluid of movement as a hound" (20). He is responsible for a number of chores around the Sartoris household, but most enjoys wearing Caspey's military uniform and taking the wheel of Bayard's car. There is no hint of how, if at all, he is being educated. He is at the wheel of a car again ten years later in Sanctuary, where he is "the negro driver" who works for Narcissa Sartoris (110) - and the only member of the Strother family who is included in the novel. And the issue of his education arises in "There Was a Queen," where he is one of three children of Elnora; along with her and a sister, he still lives in the cabin at the Sartoris place that his family has occupied since some of them were enslaved and still works for the Sartoris family as a servant who "tends the grounds" (728). But it's noteworthy that this text does mention the fact that he has been to school, though it's also worth noting that based on what he tells his mother about what he "learnt" there (732) - "what the book say in school" about the distance between Carolina and Yoknapatawpha (733) - that education was not very effective.