Follow Welty's A Worn PathThe stories merge into a long history of oppression. Slave ships transported thousands of Africans from the Gold Coast into America's grip, brutally unleashing the racial saga of black America. Workers collapse after hours spent shredding their fingers on cotton plants. Sobbing mothers tenderly clean the flesh that the cat o' nine tails tore from their child's back. America would eventually witness the emancipation of slaves, and even relative “equality,” but the obstacles facing African Americans would never completely disappear. Eudora Welty, in her short story “A Worn Path,” symbolically illustrates the obstacles that African Americans face: obstacles that white Americans have never had to face. Welty symbolically shows, through the perseverance of an aging black woman, that African Americans can and must overcome these unjust obstacles in order to complete the journey toward racial equality. In each of the obstacles she encounters, protagonist Phoenix Jackson metaphorically confronts the underlying problem. the struggles that African Americans face. While going to town to acquire medicine for her grandson, Phoenix must untangle her dress from a thorny bush. She has to cross a barbed wire fence. She is thrown into a ditch by a loose dog. She faces the barrel of a white man's gun. Although these events could have happened to anyone, Welty intends to allude to racism. The hunter would have helped Phoenix, if she were white, reach her destination. The clinic attendant would have spoken to her with more respect than "Speak, grandmother... Are you deaf?" » (Welty 97). And if she were white, she wouldn't face these trials alone; someone would have joined her on the trip or simply gone to get medicine for her. Each of these events, however, represents a broader scope: a derogatory racial slur, a segregated and dilapidated toilet, or a hateful stare, humiliating a person of color into lowering their head in shame. what an elderly person deserves, Phoenix must deal with her problems herself. By describing Phoenix's perseverance toward her grandson, Welty demonstrates the importance of fighting racism. The grandson represents the younger generation, the one for whom it is worth sacrificing. Welty acknowledges that the path to equality will be difficult: "It feels like I have chains on my feet, by the time I get here... Is something still holding me on this hill?" begs me to stay” (94). Phoenix faces trials like crossing the log over the stream and forgetting memories of bulls and two-headed snakes.