Uncle Hoskins

Uncle Hoskins is Aunt Maggie's husband and one of the few successful Black men Richard meets during his early childhood. He mostly appears in the Memphis and Elaine, Arkansas, sections of Black Boy, where he operates a thriving saloon for the local Black community. His material comfort—owning property and having a steady income—sets him apart in Richard's world of poverty and instability, briefly symbolizing the possibility of Black security and warmth in the Jim Crow South.

Hoskins is depicted as generous and good-natured. In one of the memoir's most striking early scenes, he takes Richard to the edge of the Mississippi River and pretends to steer the buggy into the water, laughing as the frightened boy screams and pleads. While the prank is meant to be lighthearted, it highlights Richard's profound difficulty in trusting adults, even those who are kind—a mistrust shaped by years of abandonment and violence. Richard can't brush it off; the episode becomes another reminder of his vulnerability.

Hoskins's story is cut tragically short. White men kill him—likely out of jealousy for his successful saloon—and the family must flee overnight, leaving everything behind. His death is reported in a matter-of-fact manner, with no consequences for the murderers, serving as a harsh lesson for Richard about the fragility of Black life and prosperity in a white-dominated society. Hoskins represents both the rare hope and the brutal erasure that characterized Black life in the early twentieth-century South.