The Blacker the Berry

by Wallace Thurman

  “Good-bye,” she said abruptly, “I must go home.” With which she turned away and walked rapidly in the opposite direction. She had only gone a few steps when she was aware of the fact that the girl was following her. She quickened her pace, but the girl caught up with her and grabbing hold of Emma Lou’s arm, shouted,

  “Whoa there, Sally.”

  It seemed to Emma Lou as if every one on the campus was viewing and enjoying this minstrel-like performance. Angrily she tried to jerk away, but the girl held fast.

  “Gal, you sure walk fast. I’m going your way. Come on, let me drive you home in my buggy.”

  And still holding on to Emma Lou’s arm, she led the way to the side street where the students parked their cars. Emma Lou was powerless to resist. The girl didn’t give her a chance, for she held tight, then immediately resumed the monologue which Emma Lou’s attempted leave-taking had interrupted. They reached the street, Hazel still talking loudly, and making elaborate gestures with her free hand.

  “Here we are,” she shouted, and releasing Emma Lou’s arm, salaamed before a sport model Stutz roadster. “Oscar,” she continued, “meet the new girl friend. Pleased to meetcha, says he. Climb aboard.”

  And Emma Lou had climbed aboard, perplexed, chagrined, thoroughly angry, and disgusted. What was this little black fool doing with a Stutz roadster? And of course, it would be painted red—Negroes always bedecked themselves and their belongings in ridiculously unbecoming colors and ornaments. It seemed to be a part of their primitive heritage which they did not seem to have sense enough to forget and deny. Black girl—white hat—red-and-white-striped sport suit—white shoes and stockings—red roadster. The picture was complete. All Hazel needed to complete her circus-like appearance, thought Emma Lou, was to have some purple feathers stuck in her hat.

  Still talking, the girl unlocked and proceeded to start the car. As she was backing it out of the narrow parking space, Emma Lou heard a chorus of semi-suppressed giggles from a neighboring automobile. In her anger she had failed to notice that there were people parked in the car next to the Stutz. But as Hazel expertly swung her machine around, Emma Lou caught a glimpse of them. They were all colored and they were all staring at her and Hazel. She thought she recognized one of the girls as being one of the group she had seen earlier that morning, and she did recognize the two brothers she had passed on the stairs. And as the roadster sped away, their laughter echoed in her ears, although she hadn’t actually heard it. But she had seen the strain in their faces, and she knew that as soon as she and Hazel were out of sight, they would give free rein to their suppressed mirth.

  Although Emma Lou had finished registering, she returned to the university campus on the following morning in order to continue her quest for collegiate companions without the alarming and unwelcome presence of Hazel Mason. She didn’t know whether to be sorry for the girl and try to help her or to be disgusted and avoid her. She didn’t want to be intimately associated with any such vulgar person. It would damage her own position, cause her to be classified with some one who was in a class by herself, for Emma Lou was certain that there was not, and could not be, any one else in the university just like Hazel. But despite her vulgarity, the girl was not all bad. Her good nature was infectious, and Emma Lou had surmised from her monologue on the day before how utterly unselfish a person she could be and was. All of her store of the world’s goods were at hand to be used and enjoyed by her friends. There was not, as she had said, “a selfish bone in her body.” But even that did not alter the disgusting fact that she was not one who would be welcome by the “right sort of people.” Her flamboyant style of dress, her loud voice, her raucous laughter, and her flagrant disregard or ignorance of English grammar seemed inexcusable to Emma Lou, who was unable to understand how such a person could stray so far from the environment in which she rightfully belonged to enter a first-class university. Now Hazel, according to Emma Lou, was the type of Negro who should go to a Negro college. There were plenty of them in the South whose standard of scholarship was not beyond her ability. And, then, in one of those schools, her darky-like clownishness would not have to be paraded in front of white people, thereby causing discomfort and embarrassment to others of her race, more civilized and circumspect than she.

  The problem irritated Emma Lou. She didn’t see why it had to be. She had looked forward so anxiously, and so happily to her introductory days on the campus, and now her first experience with one of her fellow colored students had been an unpleasant one. But she didn’t intend to let that make her unhappy. She was determined to return to the campus alone, seek out other companions, see whether they accepted or ignored the offending Hazel, and govern herself accordingly.

  It was early and there were few people on the campus. The grass was still wet from a heavy overnight dew, and the sun had not yet dispelled the coolness of the early morning. Emma Lou’s dress was of thin material and she shivered as she walked or stood in the shade. She had no school business to attend to; there was nothing for her to do but to walk aimlessly about the campus.

  In another hour, Emma Lou was pleased to see that the campus walks were becoming crowded, and that the side streets surrounding the campus were now heavy with student traffic. Things were beginning to awaken. Emma Lou became jubilant and walked with jaunty step from path to path, from building to building. It then occurred to her that she had been told that there were more Negro students enrolled in the School of Pharmacy than in any other department of the university, so, finding the Pharmacy building, she began to wander through its crowded hallways.

  Almost immediately, she saw a group of five Negro students, three boys and two girls, standing near a water fountain. She was both excited and perplexed, excited over the fact that she was so close to those she wished to find, and perplexed because she did not know how to approach them. Had there been only one person standing there, the matter would have been comparatively easy. She could have approached with a smile and said, “Good morning.” The person would have returned her greeting, and it would then have been a simple matter to get acquainted.

  But five people in one bunch all known to one another and all chatting intimately together!—it would seem too much like an intrusion to go bursting in to their gathering—too forward and too vulgar. Then, there was nothing she could say after having said “good morning.” One just didn’t break into a group of five and say, “I’m Emma Lou Morgan, a new student, and I want to make friends with you.” No, she couldn’t do that. She would just smile as she passed, smile graciously and friendly. They would know that she was a stranger, and her smile would assure them that she was anxious to make friends, anxious to become a welcome addition to their group.

  One of the group of five had sighted Emma Lou as soon as she had sighted them:

  “Who’s this?” queried Helen Wheaton, a senior in the College of Law.

  “Some new ‘pick,’ I guess,” answered Bob Armstrong, who was Helen’s fiancé and a senior in the School of Architecture.

  “I bet she’s going to take Pharmacy,” whispered Amos Blaine.

  “She’s hottentot enough to take something,” mumbled Tommy Brown. “Thank God, she won’t be in any of our classes, eh Amos?”

  Emma Lou was almost abreast of them now. They lowered their voices, and made a pretense of mumbled conversation among themselves. Only Verne Davis looked directly at her and it was she alone who returned Emma Lou’s smile.

  “Whatcha grinnin’ at?” Bob chided Verne as Emma Lou passed out of earshot.

  “At the little frosh, of course. She grinned at me. I couldn’t stare at her without returning it.”

  “I don’t see how anybody could even look at her without grinning.”

  “Oh, she’s not so bad,” said Verne.

  “Well, she’s bad enough.”

  “That makes two of them.”

  “Two of what, Amos?”

  “Hottentots, Bob.”

  “Good grief,” exclaimed Tommy, “why don’t you
recruit some good-looking co-eds out here?”

  “We don’t choose them,” Helen returned.

  “I’m going out to the Southern Branch where the sight of my fellow female students won’t give me dyspepsia.”

  “Ta-ta, Amos,” said Verne, “and you needn’t bother to sit in my car any more if you think us so terrible.” She and Helen walked away, leaving the boys to discuss the sad days which had fallen upon the campus.

  Emma Lou, of course, knew nothing of all this. She had gone her way rejoicing. One of the students had noticed her, had returned her smile. This getting acquainted was going to be an easy matter after all. It was just necessary that she exercise a little patience. One couldn’t expect people to fall all over one without some preliminary advances. True, she was a stranger, but she would show them in good time that she was worthy of their attention, that she was a good fellow and a well-bred individual quite prepared to be accepted by the best people.

  She strolled out onto the campus again trying to find more prospective acquaintances. The sun was warm now, the grass dry, and the campus overcrowded. There was an infectious germ of youth and gladness abroad to which Emma Lou could not remain immune. Already she was certain that she felt the presence of that vague something known as “college spirit.” It seemed to enter into her, to make her jubilant and set her very nerves tingling. This was no time for sobriety. It was the time for youth’s blood to run hot, the time for love and sport and wholesome fun.

  Then Emma Lou saw a solitary Negro girl seated on a stone bench. It did not take her a second to decide what to do. Here was her chance. She would make friends with this girl and should she happen to be a new student, they could become friends and together find their way into the inner circle of those colored students who really mattered.

  Emma Lou was essentially a snob. She had absorbed this trait from the very people who had sought to exclude her from their presence. All of her life she had heard talk of the “right sort of people,” and of “the people who really mattered,” and from these phrases she had formed a mental image of those to whom they applied. Hazel Mason most certainly could not be included in either of these categories. Hazel was just a vulgar little nigger from down South. It was her kind, who, when they came North, made it hard for the colored people already resident there. It was her kind who knew nothing of the social niceties or the polite conventions. In her own home they had been used only to coarse work and coarser manners. And they had been forbidden the chance to have intimate contact in schools and in public with white people from whom they might absorb some semblance of culture. When they did come North and get a chance to go to white schools, white theaters, and white libraries, they were too unused to them to appreciate what they were getting, and could be expected to continue their old way of life in an environment where such a way was decidedly out of place.

  Emma Lou was determined to become associated only with those people who really mattered, northerners like herself or superior southerners, if there were any, who were different from whites only in so far as skin color was concerned. This girl to whom she was now about to introduce herself, was the type she had in mind, genteel, well and tastily dressed, and not ugly.

  “Good morning.”

  Alma Martin looked up from the book she was reading, gulped in surprise, then answered, “Good morning.”

  Emma Lou sat down on the bench. She was congeniality itself. “Are you a new student?” she inquired of the astonished Alma, who wasn’t used to this sort of thing.

  “No, I’m a ‘soph,’” then realizing she was expected to say more, “you’re new, aren’t you?”

  “Oh yes” replied Emma Lou, her voice buoyant and glad. “This will be my first year.”

  “Do you think you will like it?”

  “I’m just crazy about it already. You know,” she advanced confidentially, “I’ve never gone to school with any colored people before.”

  “No?”

  “No, and I am just dying to get acquainted with the colored students. Oh, my name’s Emma Lou Morgan.”

  “And mine is Alma Martin.”

  They both laughed. There was a moment of silence. Alma looked at her wristwatch, then got up from the bench.

  “I’m glad to have met you. I’ve got to see my advisor at ten-thirty. Good-bye.” And she moved away gracefully.

  Emma Lou was having difficulty in keeping from clapping her hands. At last she had made some headway. She had met a second-year student, one who, from all appearances, was in the know, and who, as they met from time to time, would see that she met others. In a short time Emma Lou felt that she would be in the whirl of things collegiate. She must write to her Uncle Joe immediately and let him know how well things were going. He had been right. This was the place for her to be. There had been no one in Boise worth considering. Here she was coming into contact with really superior people, intelligent, genteel, college-bred, all trying to advance themselves and their race, unconscious of intra-racial schisms caused by difference in skin color.

  She mustn’t stop upon meeting one person. She must find others, so once more she began her quest and almost immediately met Verne and Helen strolling down one of the campus paths. She remembered Verne as the girl who had smiled at her. She observed her more closely, and admired her pleasant dark brown face, made doubly attractive by two evenly placed dimples and a pair of large, heavily lidded, pitch black eyes. Emma Lou thought her to be much more attractive than the anemic-looking yellow girl with whom she was strolling. There was something about this second girl which made Emma Lou feel that she was not easy to approach.

  “Good morning.” Emma Lou had evolved a formula.

  “Good morning,” the two girls spoke in unison. Helen was about to walk on but Verne stopped.

  “New student?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “So am I. I’m Verne Davis.”

  “I’m Emma Lou Morgan.”

  “And this is Helen Wheaton.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Miss Morgan.”

  “And I’m pleased to meet you, too, both of you,” gushed Emma Lou. “You see, I’m from Boise, Idaho, and all through high school I was the only colored student.”

  “Is that so?” Helen inquired listlessly. Then turning to Verne said, “Better come on Verne if you are going to drive us out to the ‘Branch.’”

  “All right. We’ve got to run along now. We’ll see you again, Miss Morgan. Good-bye.”

  “Good-bye,” said Emma Lou and stood watching them as they went on their way. Yes, college life was going to be the thing to bring her out, the turning point in her life. She would show the people back in Boise that she did not have to be a “no-gooder” as they claimed her father had been, just because she was black. She would show all of them that a dark-skin girl could go as far in life as a fair-skin one, and that she could have as much opportunity and as much happiness. What did the color of one’s skin have to do with one’s mentality or native ability? Nothing whatsoever. If a black boy could get along in the world, so could a black girl, and it would take her, Emma Lou Morgan, to prove it.

  With that she set out to make still more acquaintances.

  Two weeks of school had left Emma Lou’s mind in a chaotic state. She was unable to draw any coherent conclusions from the jumble of new things she had experienced. In addition to her own social striving, there had been the academic routine to which she had to adapt herself. She had found it all bewildering and overpowering. The university was a huge business proposition and every one in it had jobs to perform. Its bigness awed her. Its blatant reality shocked her. There was nothing romantic about going to college. It was, indeed, a serious business. One went there with a purpose and had several other purposes inculcated into one after school began. This getting an education was stern and serious, regulated and systematized, dull and unemotional.

  Besides being disappointed at the drabness and lack of romance in college routine, Emma Lou was also depressed by her inability to
make much headway in the matter of becoming intimately associated with her colored campus mates. They were all polite enough. They all acknowledged their introductions to her and would speak whenever they passed her, but seldom did any of them stop for a chat, and when she joined the various groups which gathered on the campus lawn between classes, she always felt excluded and out of things because she found herself unable to participate in the general conversation. They talked of things about which she knew nothing, of parties and dances, and of people she did not know. They seemed to live a life off the campus to which she was not privy, and into which they did not seem particularly anxious to introduce her.

  She wondered why she never knew of the parties they talked about, and why she never received invitations to any of their affairs. Perhaps it was because she was still new and comparatively unknown to them. She felt that she must not forget that most of them had known one another for a long period of time and that it was necessary for people who “belonged” to be wary of strangers. That was it. She was still a stranger, had only been among them for about two weeks. What did she expect? Why was she so impatient?

  The thought of the color question presented itself to her time and time again, but she would always dismiss it from her mind. Verne Davis was dark and she was not excluded from the sacred inner circle. In fact, she was one of the most popular colored girls on the campus. The only thing that perplexed Emma Lou was that although Verne, too, was new to the group, had just recently moved into the city, and was also just beginning her first year at the university, she had not been kept at a distance or excluded from any of the major extra-collegiate activities. Emma Lou could not understand why there should be this difference in their social acceptance. She was certainly as good as Verne.