Song of Solomon: The Names of a Society Think of a time when black society was still getting used to the word freedom and white society hated the very thought. The book Song of Solomon, written by Toni Morrison in 1977, is set in Michigan, on the shores of Lake Superior. The book highlights the racial and social tensions between blacks and whites between the 1930s and 1960s. The Dead family goes through many phases of self-discovery throughout the story. In an effort to hide his working-class Southern roots, Macon Dead, an upper-middle-class black businessman from the North, tries to isolate his family from the danger and desperation of the rank-and-file blacks with whom he shares the neighborhood. . Macon can't stop this from affecting his family when he discovers that his son has different plans. The book features many characters who received their names from desires, events, mistakes, and weaknesses. Some of these names are as a sign of respect and others are given by certain events. Mostly the names are used in defiance of the "cracker society". Black society used this term to refer to “white society.” The Dead family lives on a street officially called "Mains Avenue". The only black doctor in the city lived on this street and it soon became known as "Doctor Street". It soon became the unofficial name of the street, known not only to the doctor's patients, but also to the rest of the city's black citizens. White legislators soon put an end to the street's misnaming and posted notices prohibiting misreferences to it in the black neighborhood. The notices specified that the avenue "would always be known as Mains Avenue and not Doctor Street" (p. 4). With a subtle retaliation, the ci......middle of paper......attacks the society of those days. They kept and used names that cracker society would forget in a few days. By retaining such names the black community quietly defied conformity to white society. This novel illustrates how the human spirit cannot be dominated. The black community is able to fill the empty spaces that the "other society" is unable to enter or relate to. When Milkman thinks back to all the people he met on his journey, he reflects the essence of the novel: "Names they received from desires, gestures, flaws, events, mistakes, weaknesses. Names they witnessed" (p. 330). The African American population has found a way to allow life and spirit in a world controlled by "crackers". Their challenge proves that the human spirit is unstoppable. Morrison, Toni. Song of Songs. New York: first printing of the plume, 1987.