Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses racism and violence.

In the background to the events of Paperboy is the beginning of the civil rights movement, which slowly grew throughout the 1950s before its explosion in the 1960s. The year that this story takes place, 1959, was a hinge in the history of the movement. Earlier in the 1950s, activists had won important victories, including mandated school integration and the desegregation of bussing. However, these changes took years to implement and were resisted heavily by the states that the Supreme Court required to integrate. The Memphis of 1959 is not yet integrated, and Black characters such as Mam are forced to sit at the back of the bus when alone and cannot go to the zoo without a white person accompanying them.

The 11-year-old Victor, a white child, is not very aware, at the beginning of the novel, about the difficulties faced by Black people in his city. However, through his interactions with Ara T., his neighbors, and Mam over the course of the summer, Victor comes to understand the unfairness of Jim Crow laws and the mistreatment of Black people at the hands of the government.