In A Lesson Before Dying, the black schoolteacher named Grant Wiggins is asked by a family friend, Miss Emma, to make her godson Jefferson be more grownup like a man should be for his age. After eighteen years of racist oppression and only one major mistake, Jefferson is accused of robbery and first-degree murder, both of which he did not commit. He was simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. In Jefferson's trial, the judge is white, the lawyers are white, and every member of the jury is white. Therefore, Jefferson receives a trial not by his peers, but by his oppressors. Because he is black in a racist society, the law will not help Jefferson, as shown in the fact that all twelve jurors found him guilty on both charges. When Grant contemplates about what Miss Emma asks of him to do, he questions if he can truly teach Jefferson everything he needs to know about life. Around this time in the book is where the main conflict arises: should Grant leave the South for the North or not. As Grant struggles to manage in the racist white society, his primary struggle is in reality with his own mind. As he mentions to his girlfriend Vivian, he cannot even face Jefferson because he cannot face himself and his own life. Vivian exposes Grant's conflicted nature by saying, "You went to California to visit your mother and father-but you wouldn't stay. You couldn't stay. You had to come back" (Page 30). When Vivian asks him why he returned, Grant avoids the question all together even though we know he feels repulsed by the environment in which he grew up. But when he re-offers to take Vivian and her children far away from the South, she considers the idea unrealistic and threatens to leave the bar where they are talking if he continues to speak about such ideas. Despite his statement that Vivian's presence is the reason that he remains in Bayonne, Vivian knows that there are larger issues at play here. The novel shows tha...