Daddy Clidell
The conservative, unassuming husband Vivian marries shortly after World War II begins. A successful but poorly educated property owner from Slaten, Texas, he is the first real father in Maya's life and teaches her to play "poker, blackjack, tonk and high, low, Jick, Jack and the Game."
Reverend Howard Thomas
Texarkana resident who presides as church elder over the district including Stamps. Hated by Maya and Bailey for being ugly, fat, and pompous, he freeloads meals from Annie. During one Sunday morning worship, his teeth fall out while he duels with Sister Monroe during her violent response to his evangelism.
Sister Monroe
An energetic, shouting churchgoer who makes up for infrequent attendance by jostling the minister and urging him to "Preach it!"
Miz Ruth, Miz Helen, Miz Eloise
Young lower-class white girls who mock Annie Henderson by imitating her posture. The tallest one does a handstand in the dust, revealing her bare backside as an extra dollop of disrespect.
Mrs. Bertha Flowers
A cool, thin, black-skinned Stamps matron who, with her voile dresses, flowered hats, and white gloves, embodies a refined, ladylike grace that is the antithesis of local squalor and misery. As baker of tea cookies, reader of Dickens, and representative of what Momma calls "settled people," Mrs. Flowers is an appropriate antidote to Maya's poignant self-loathing.
Viola Cullinan
Maya's white acquisitive and tradition-bound employer and the barren wife of Mr. Cullinan, who fathered the Coleman girls, two attractive daughters of a Stamps black woman. Perceiving herself as Virginia-born elite, Mrs. Cullinan precipitates an early burst of rebellion in Maya by renaming her Mary, thereby denying her personhood. Shrieking for her mother's forgiveness, Mrs. Cullinan offers comic relief by wallowing among the fragments of her ruined dinnerware.
Louise Kendricks
Louise, the daughter of a domestic worker, is a lonely girl and fellow ten year old who shares Maya's dreamy romanticism as well as the Tut language, a secret child's language. Loss of Louise's friendship is Maya's sole regret in departing from Stamps.
Tommy Valdon
Maya's first male admirer, an eighth-grader who, without knowledge of her past, reawakens shreds of rape trauma.
Joyce
A sexually precocious fourteen year old who seduces ten-year-old Bailey, instigating his petty thievery of sardines, Polish sausage, cheese, and canned salmon from the store, then runs away to Dallas, Texas, to marry a railroad porter, one of a group of Elks that she met in Momma's store.
George Taylor
A recent widower after forty years of marriage to wife Florida. Mr. Taylor, owlish, bald, wizened, and pathetic, visits Annie Henderson's house at suppertime to tell about a request for children from his wife's ghost.
Mr. Edward Donleavy
A condescending white politician from Texarkana who patronizes Maya's graduating class by stereotyping their heroes as athletes and limiting their horizons to mundane trades, then exits the stage to attend to more important matters in the white world.
Henry Reed
Valedictorian of the 1940 graduating class of Lafayette County Training School. Raised by his grandmother and trained by his teachers in elocution, he earns Maya's qualified regard for reciting "To Be or Not To Be" from Shakespeare's Hamlet, then lifts the general mood by leading his class in an impromptu singing of the black national anthem, James Weldon Johnson's "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing."
Mr. Freeman
A large, flabby Southerner who unashamedly worships Vivian, his paramour, following her out of the room with adoring eyes. A foreman for the Southern Pacific Railroad, Mr. Freeman spends his life waiting for Vivian's return. Faceless, sinister, and smelling of coal dust and grease, he sexually abuses eight-year-old Maya, then rapes her. After stopping by her bed to repeat his threat against her brother if she reveals his crimes, Mr. Freeman departs from Vivian's house. His murder, although grisly, seems well deserved.
Miss Kirwin
Maya's civics and current events teacher at George Washington High School in San Francisco. A twenty-year veteran with memorable stature and "battleship-gray hair," she impresses Maya by respecting teenagers enough to refer to them as "ladies and gentlemen."
Red Leg
Along with Just Black, Stonewall Jimmy, Cool Clyde, and Tight Coat, Red Leg, a quick-witted underworld friend of Daddy Clidell, entertains Maya with a long-winded story of how he conned a Tulsa cracker.
Dolores Stockland
Bailey Johnson's prim, pretentious small-framed girl friend, who interrupts her meticulous sewing of kitchen curtains to vent her temper and jealousy on Maya by stabbing her in the side.
Bootsie
A tall boy who serves as spokesman for the rules of the junkyard commune where Maya lives. He maintains group finances by keeping everyone's earnings and doling them out equitably.
Lee Arthur
The only member of the junkyard commune who lives at home. Lee welcomes the gang to his house on Friday evenings for baths.
