Content Warning: This section of the guide includes depictions of racism.

Grisham’s fictional setting of Ford County, Mississippi positions Sycamore Row’s story within a microcosm of Southern culture. The issue of racial inequality, both historically and in the novel’s dramatic present, is portrayed as a product of distinct influences, all of which are tied to place and time and inevitably linked to the past. The narrative suggests that Southern attitudes about race change at a different pace than in other parts of the country, and those deep roots of racial prejudice influence every scene in the novel. As Lucien puts it: “Everything is about race in Mississippi, Jake, don’t ever forget that” (91). Though Lucien’s comment highlights the inextricability of racism from life in the American South, Sycamore Row’s narrative develops four narrower conclusions about race relations in the Deep South, which culminate in a message of caution against complacency.

Sycamore Row’s first conclusion about the American South in the late 1980s is that segregation hasn’t gone away with desegregation laws; it has only become informal. Black and white residents of Ford County still live in separate parts of town. They still often earn different wages for the same work—as evidenced by Seth’s office manager claiming Seth isn’t a bigot like most people because he pays his Black and white employees the same wage.