Maybe life was better outside of the South...

"Alice had never seen a colored woman wearing such nice clothes, a dark straight skirt and silk blouse and a light seersucker jacket. Maybe it was true that life was better outside the South. Maybe, somehow, the world really was a place of hope and light, if only the geography were different from what Alice knew about. Well, it couldn't be any worse (246)."

Alice has become accustomed to her life in the South and doesn't know any different. Her classroom field-trips consist of boat rides through sea human waste and a funeral parlor. There is a naïveté, due to the lack of exposure, that allows for such field-trips to take place. So upon setting eyes on Bobo's mom, she sees a woman of color dress differently to what she is use to seeing. This seems to allow her to see past her surroundings. Alice is already upset with the murder of the young child and the trial injustice soon approaching. However, seeing this woman, welcomes a different perspective to the world she thought to know. But given her present situation in the courtroom, she figured that whatever the North had to offer wasn't any worse than what she was already experiencing.

Could this sighting have encouraged Alice to leave her job as teacher and move on, and perhaps, also give her the courage to speak to Sally Anne?