Ragtime Chapter 32 Summary

  • Mother leaves a note for Younger Brother when they leave, which we learn will never be claimed.
  • Younger Brother, after the first attack on the firehouse, has gone and found Coalhouse and told him he knows how to make bombs. His career as an outlaw and revolutionary has begun.
  • Younger Brother shaves his moustache and shaves his head. He blackens his face and hands with burnt cork. He makes the three package bombs used in a West End blast, proving his worth to Coalhouse's gang.
  • We're told this info comes from a journal Younger Brother kept from the time he arrived in Harlem until his death in Mexico more than a year later. In the journal Younger Brother says there were five in the gang besides himself and Coalhouse, and that Coalhouse was a great leader.
  • They steal cars for the attacks they make on the firehouses. After his picture appears in the paper, Coalhouse shaves his head and moustache.
  • Coalhouse and his gang get word that the car has been pulled from the pond, and that Chief Conklin has fled town. The men discuss plans for something "terrible," so that no ever messes with a black man around there again.