Unnamed Negro Neighbors of Joanna Burden

Although the white people of Jefferson shun Joanna Burden, the people of the local black community have close ties with her, as indicated by the footpaths which "radiate from her house like wheelspokes" (257). She "visits them when they are sick," Byron tells Lena, "like they was white" (53). And living at the Burden place Joe notes "the negro women who came to the house from both directions up and down the road," "usually singly though sometimes in twos and threes," and wearing the "aprons and headrags" that are the costume of their caste (257).