In the short story "The Flowers" how do we know that the dead man is actually a black man ?

Interestingly, in Alice Walker's short story "The Flowers", there is no literal indication of the dead man's race. However, using historical and authorial context, the reader can draw the conclusion that he is black. 

Historical Context:Myop, the protagonist, lives in a "sharecropper cabin", which places this story between the 1860s and 1940s, during which time sharecropping was a common practice in the American South. Given this information, the reader can also intuit other common...

Interestingly, in Alice Walker's short story "The Flowers", there is no literal indication of the dead man's race. However, using historical and authorial context, the reader can draw the conclusion that he is black. 

Historical Context: Myop, the protagonist, lives in a "sharecropper cabin", which places this story between the 1860s and 1940s, during which time sharecropping was a common practice in the American South. Given this information, the reader can also intuit other common cultural practices of this stated time period. Following slavery, the South underwent a rampant persecution of black men, including commonplace lynchings. The presence of a noose, overalls (common clothing for black men in the South, who were relegated to social positions of servitude), and this stated historical context, the reader can deduce that the victim of the lynching was most likely black. 

Authorial Context: Alice Walker is an African American woman, most of whose characters are black. Therefore, the reader could make the connection to her other works and surmise that he could likely be black.