In Light in August Joanna Burden conducts a steady and voluminous correspondence with "the presidents and faculties and trustees" and "young girl students and even alumnae" of various southern Negro schools and colleges. In her replies Joanna sends them "advice, business, financial and religions" and "advice personal and practical" (233).
This man never appears in Light in August; he loses his shoes when his wife swaps "her husband's brogans which she was wearing at the time" for the shoes Joe Christmas is wearing (329).
This is the man in Light in August who lives in a cabin "on the edge of town immediately behind" Hightower's house, and who seeks help from Hightower when his wife goes into labor (73). The narrative suggests that he is afraid to approach a white woman to ask for help: "Hightower knew that the man would walk all the way to town . . . instead of asking some white woman to telephone for him" (74).
In Light in August Joanna Burden leaves Jefferson several times a year, for "three and four days," during which she visits the various "negro schools and colleges through the south" that she supports (233). There she meets with "the teachers and the students" (234).
The posse chasing Christmas in Light in August finds this child, "stark naked" and "sitting in the cold ashes on the hearth" beside his mother, when they kick open the door to her cabin (329). There is no indication of the child's gender.
In Light in August this bootblack works in the Mottstown barber shop where Christmas gets a shave. The barbershop is identified as "a white barbership," but in that context the adjective refers to the patrons it serves (349). The race of the bootblack is not specified, but since the job he performs, shining shoes, is typically done in Faulkner's fiction by blacks, we have identified his race as "Black." This bootblack notices that Joe is wearing "second hand brogans that are too big for him" (349).
The Negro who gives Christmas a ride into Mottstown in Light in August tells him that he is going there to pick up "a yellin calf" that "pappy bought" (339). "Yellin" almost certainly means 'yearling,' and "pappy" presumably means 'father.'
At the "little cafe down by the depot" in Mottstown in Light in August, this "cafe man" serves dinner to Doc and Mrs. Hines and suggests they hire a car to take them to Jefferson rather than wait for the train (359).
In Light in August Joe Christmas and Joe Brown make enough money selling illegal whiskey in Jefferson to quit their jobs at the planing mill and buy a car. The narrative refers several times to the men who buy from them, but the closest it ever comes to individualizing these customers is when it says that the "young men and even boys" in town all know that they can purchase whiskey "from Brown almost on sight" (46).
The men who are Hightower's teachers at the seminary in Light in August are also Presbyterian ministers. Hightower's decision to marry is based in part on the fact that "most of the faculty were married" (480).
