Bigger's Letter

To: The World Consumed By the White Man's Grasp

My intention in this letter is not to give and ask for forgiveness, it is
merely a letter of frustration and anger. I can not lie and say that I
am innocent, because I would just be pulling your string. For you
have enough evidence against me. I am frustrated and angry for
the fact that I am being characterized under such circumstances
as being just another "black guy killing a white woman" a rich one
in my case. As you have probably heard there has been a lot of talk
about me being a Communist or that they were somehow involved
in Miss Dalton's death, but I have news for you. I had no help from
the "Reds," yes, you heard me, it was me, all me. I knew what I had
done, and I felt such an overwhelming feeling of power when I did it.
Yet I still do not regret what I have done. This is what society has
made me, in fact it is what the world has made out of me. This world,
this white society, has controlled everything I could, want or ever
wished to do. Did you know I had dreams of becoming an aviator,
but as fast as that dream came, it left, for no black guy would or
could do such thing? Yes, this feeling of sense of power and freedom
is what drove me to do such deed. Killing this "white woman" as you
call it, was the closest I ever came to escaping the white man's grasp,
what they expected from me and what they wanted me to be. For I
will not let myself be entwine into becoming just another "black guy"
statistic in a white man's world.

Bigger Thomas