PART I

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THE BLACKER

THE BERRY

A NOVEL OF

NEGRO LIFE

By WALLACE THURMAN

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THE MACAULAY COMPANY

NEW YORK MCMXXIX

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COPYRIGHT, 1929, BY THE MACAULAY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

PART I -- EMMA LOU -- 9

PART II -- HARLEM -- 75

PART III -- ALVA -- 111

PART IV -- RENT PARTY -- 157

PART V -- PYRRHIC VICTORY -- 217

_TO MA JACK_

The blacker the berry

The sweeter the juice...

--_Negro folk saying_

My color shrouds me in....

--_Countee Cullen_

PART I

EMMA LOU

I

EMMA LOU

More acutely than ever before Emma Lou began to feel that her luscious

black complexion was somewhat of a liability, and that her marked color

variation from the other people in her environment was a decided curse.

Not that she minded being black, being a Negro necessitated having a

colored skin, but she did mind being too black. She couldn’t understand

why such should be the case, couldn’t comprehend the cruelty of the

natal attenders who had allowed her to be dipped, as it were, in indigo

ink when there were so many more pleasing colors on nature’s palette.

Biologically, it wasn’t necessary either; her mother was quite fair,

so was her mother’s mother, and her mother’s brother, and her mother’s

brother’s son; but then none of them had had a black man for a father.

Why _had_ her mother married a black man? Surely there had been some

eligible brown-skin men around. She didn’t particularly desire to have

had a “high yaller” father, but for her sake certainly some more happy

medium could have been found.

She wasn’t the only person who regretted her darkness either. It was

an acquired family characteristic, this moaning and grieving over the

color of her skin. Everything possible had been done to alleviate the

unhappy condition, every suggested agent had been employed, but her

skin, despite bleachings, scourgings, and powderings, had remained

black--fast black--as nature had planned and effected.

She should have been born a boy, then color of skin wouldn’t have

mattered so much, for wasn’t her mother always saying that a black boy

could get along, but that a black girl would never know anything but

sorrow and disappointment? But she wasn’t a boy; she was a girl, and

color did matter, mattered so much that she would rather have missed

receiving her high school diploma than have to sit as she now sat,

the only odd and conspicuous figure on the auditorium platform of the

Boise high school. Why had she allowed them to place her in the center

of the first row, and why had they insisted upon her dressing entirely

in white so that surrounded as she was by similarly attired pale-faced

fellow graduates she resembled, not at all remotely, that comic picture

her Uncle Joe had hung in his bedroom? The picture wherein the black,

kinky head of a little red-lipped pickaninny lay like a fly in a pan of

milk amid a white expanse of bedclothes.

But of course she couldn’t have worn blue or black when the call was

for the wearing of white, even if white was not complementary to her

complexion. She would have been odd-looking anyway no matter what she

wore and she would also have been conspicuous, for not only was she the

only dark-skinned person on the platform, she was also the only Negro

pupil in the entire school, and had been for the past four years. Well,

thank goodness, the principal would soon be through with his monotonous

farewell address, and she and the other members of her class would

advance to the platform center as their names were called and receive

the documents which would signify their unconditional release from

public school.

As she thought of these things, Emma Lou glanced at those who sat

to the right and to the left of her. She envied them their obvious

elation, yet felt a strange sense of superiority because of her

immunity for the moment from an ephemeral mob emotion. Get a

diploma?--What did it mean to her? College?--Perhaps. A job?--Perhaps

again. She was going to have a high school diploma, but it would mean

nothing to her whatsoever. The tragedy of her life was that she was too

black. Her face and not a slender roll of ribbon-bound parchment was

to be her future identification tag in society. High school diploma

indeed! What she needed was an efficient bleaching agent, a magic

cream that would remove this unwelcome black mask from her face and

make her more like her fellow men.

“Emma Lou Morgan.”

She came to with a start. The principal had called her name and stood

smiling down at her benevolently. Some one--she knew it was her Cousin

Buddie, stupid imp--applauded, very faintly, very provokingly. Some one

else snickered.

“Emma Lou Morgan.”

The principal had called her name again, more sharply than before and

his smile was less benevolent. The girl who sat to the left of her

nudged her. There was nothing else for her to do but to get out of that

anchoring chair and march forward to receive her diploma. But why did

the people in the audience have to stare so? Didn’t they all know that

Emma Lou Morgan was Boise high school’s only nigger student? Didn’t

they all know--but what was the use. She had to go get that diploma,

so summoning her most insouciant manner, she advanced to the platform

center, brought every muscle of her lithe limbs into play, haughtily

extended her shiny black arm to receive the proffered diploma, bowed a

chilly thanks, then holding her arms stiffly at her sides, insolently

returned to her seat in that foreboding white line, insolently returned

once more to splotch its pale purity and to mock it with her dark,

outlandish difference.

* * * * *

Emma Lou had been born in a semi-white world, totally surrounded by an

all-white one, and those few dark elements that had forced their way in

had either been shooed away or else greeted with derisive laughter. It

was the custom always of those with whom she came into most frequent

contact to ridicule or revile any black person or object. A black cat

was a harbinger of bad luck, black crape was the insignia of mourning,

and black people were either evil niggers with poisonous blue gums or

else typical vaudeville darkies. It seemed as if the people in her

world never went half-way in their recognition or reception of things

black, for these things seemed always to call forth only the most

extreme emotional reactions. They never provoked mere smiles or mere

melancholy, rather they were the signal either for boisterous guffaws

or pain-induced and tear-attended grief.

Emma Lou had been becoming increasingly aware of this for a long time,

but her immature mind had never completely grasped its full, and to

her, tragic significance. First there had been the case of her father,

old black Jim Morgan they called him, and Emma Lou had often wondered

why it was that he of all the people she heard discussed by her family

should always be referred to as if his very blackness condemned him to

receive no respect from his fellow men.

She had also begun to wonder if it was because of his blackness that

he had never been in evidence as far as she knew. Inquiries netted

very unsatisfactory answers. “Your father is no good.” “He left your

mother, deserted her shortly after you were born.” And these statements

were always prefixed or followed by some epithet such as “dirty black

no-gooder” or “durn his onery black hide.” There was in fact only one

member of the family who did not speak of her father in this manner,

and that was her Uncle Joe, who was also the only person in the family

to whom she really felt akin, because he alone never seemed to regret,

to bemoan, or to ridicule her blackness of skin. It was her grandmother

who did all the regretting, her mother who did the bemoaning, her

Cousin Buddie and her playmates, both white and colored, who did the

ridiculing.

Emma Lou’s maternal grandparents, Samuel and Maria Lightfoot, were

both mulatto products of slave-day promiscuity between male masters

and female chattel. Neither had been slaves, their own parents having

been granted their freedom because of their rather close connections

with the white branch of the family tree. These freedmen had migrated

into Kansas with their children, and when these children had grown up

they in turn had joined the westward-ho parade of that current era, and

finally settled in Boise, Idaho.

Samuel and Maria, like many others of their kind and antecedents, had

had only one compelling desire, which motivated their every activity

and dictated their every thought. They wished to put as much physical

and mental space between them and the former home of their parents as

was possible. That was why they had left Kansas, for in Kansas there

were too many reminders of that which their parents had escaped and

from which they wished to flee. Kansas was too near the former slave

belt, too accessible to disgruntled southerners, who, deprived of their

slaves, were inculcated with an easily communicable virus, nigger

hatred. Then, too, in Kansas all Negroes were considered as belonging

to one class. It didn’t matter if you and your parents had been

freedmen before the Emancipation Proclamation, nor did it matter that

you were almost three-quarters white. You were, nevertheless, classed

with those hordes of hungry, ragged, ignorant black folk arriving from

the South in such great numbers, packed like so many stampeding cattle

in dirty, manure-littered box cars.

From all of this these maternal grandparents of Emma Lou fled, fled

to the Rocky Mountain states which were too far away for the recently

freed slaves to reach, especially since most of them believed that

the world ended just a few miles north of the Mason-Dixon line. Then,

too, not only were the Rocky Mountain states beyond the reach of

this raucous and smelly rabble of recently freed cotton pickers and

plantation hands, but they were also peopled by pioneers, sturdy land

and gold seekers from the East, marching westward, always westward in

search of El Dorado, and being too busy in this respect to be violently

aroused by problems of race unless economic factors precipitated

matters.

So Samuel and Maria went into the fast farness of a little known Rocky

Mountain territory and settled in Boise, at the time nothing more

than a trading station for the Indians and whites, and a red light

center for the cowboys and sheepherders and miners in the neighboring

vicinity. Samuel went into the saloon business and grew prosperous.

Maria raised a family and began to mother nuclear elements for a future

select Negro social group.

There was of course in such a small and haphazardly populated community

some social intermixture between whites and blacks. White and black

gamblers rolled the dice together, played tricks on one another while

dealing faro, and became allies in their attempts to outfigure the

roulette wheel. White and black men amicably frequented the saloons and

dancehalls together. White and black women leaned out of the doorways

and windows of the jerry-built frame houses and log cabins of “Whore

Row.” White and black housewives gossiped over back fences and lent

one another needed household commodities. But there was little social

intercourse on a higher scale. Slue-foot Sal, the most popular high

yaller on “Whore Row,” might be a buddy to Irish Peg and Blond Liz, but

Mrs. Amos James, whose husband owned the town’s only drygoods store,

could certainly not become too familiar with Mrs. Samuel Lightfoot,

colored, whose husband owned a saloon. And it was not a matter of the

difference in their respective husbands’ businesses. Mrs. Amos James

did associate with Mrs. Arthur Emory, white, whose husband also owned a

saloon. It was purely a matter of color.

Emma Lou’s grandmother then, holding herself aloof from the inmates of

“Whore Row,” and not wishing to associate with such as old Mammy Lewis’

daughters, who did most of the town wash, and others of their ilk, was

forced to choose her social equals slowly and carefully. This was hard,

for there were so few Negroes in Boise anyway that there wasn’t much

cream to skim off. But as the years passed, others, who, like Maria

and her husband, were mulatto offsprings of mulatto freedmen seeking a

freer land, moved in, and were soon initiated into what was later to be

known as the blue vein circle, so named because all of its members were

fair-skinned enough for their blood to be seen pulsing purple through

the veins of their wrists.

Emma Lou’s grandmother was the founder and the acknowledged leader of

Boise’s blue veins, and she guarded its exclusiveness passionately and

jealously. Were they not a superior class? Were they not a very high

type of Negro, comparable to the persons of color group in the West

Indies? And were they not entitled, ipso facto, to more respect and

opportunity and social acceptance than the more pure blooded Negroes?

In their veins was some of the best blood of the South. They were

closely akin to the only true aristocrats in the United States. Even

the slave masters had been aware of and acknowledged in some measure

their superiority. Having some of Marse George’s blood in their veins

set them apart from ordinary Negroes at birth. These mulattoes as a

rule were not ordered to work in the fields beneath the broiling sun at

the urge of a Simon Legree lash. They were saved and trained for the

more gentle jobs, saved and trained to be ladies’ maids and butlers.

Therefore, let them continue this natural division of Negro society.

Let them also guard against unwelcome and degenerating encroachments.

Their motto must be “Whiter and whiter every generation,” until the

grandchildren of the blue veins could easily go over into the white

race and become assimilated so that problems of race would plague them

no more.

Maria had preached this doctrine to her two children, Jane and Joe,

throughout their apprentice years, and can therefore be forgiven

for having a physical collapse when they both, first Joe, then Emma

Lou’s mother, married not mulattoes, but a copper brown and a blue

black. This had been somewhat of a necessity, for, when the mating

call had made itself heard to them, there had been no eligible blue

veins around. Most of their youthful companions had been sent away to

school or else to seek careers in eastern cities, and those few who had

remained had already found their chosen life’s companions. Maria had

sensed that something of the kind might happen and had urged Samuel

to send Jane and Joe away to some eastern boarding school, but Samuel

had very stubbornly refused. He had his own notions of the sort of

things one’s children learned in boarding school, and of the greater

opportunities they had to apply that learning. True, they might

acquire the same knowledge in the public schools of Boise, but then

there would be some limit to the extent to which they could apply this

knowledge, seeing that they lived at home and perforce must submit to

some parental supervision. A cot in the attic at home was to Samuel a

much safer place for a growing child to sleep than an iron four poster

in a boarding school dormitory.

So Samuel had remained adamant and the two carefully reared scions of

Boise’s first blue vein family had of necessity sought their mates

among the lower orders. However, Joe’s wife was not as undesirable as

Emma Lou’s father, for she was almost three-quarters Indian, and there

was scant possibility that her children would have revolting dark

skins, thick lips, spreading nostrils, and kinky hair. But in the case

of Emma Lou’s father, there were no such extenuating characteristics,

for his physical properties undeniably stamped him as a full blooded

Negro. In fact, it seemed as if he had come from one of the few

families originally from Africa, who could not boast of having been

seduced by some member of the southern aristocracy, or befriended by

some member of a strolling band of Indians.

No one could understand why Emma Lou’s mother had married Jim Morgan,

least of all Jane herself. In fact she hadn’t thought much about it

until Emma Lou had been born. She had first met Jim at a church

picnic, given in a woodlawn meadow on the outskirts of the city,

and almost before she had realized what was happening she had found

herself slipping away from home, night after night, to stroll down a

well shaded street, known as Lover’s Lane, with the man her mother had

forbidden her to see. And it hadn’t been long before they had decided

that an elopement would be the only thing to assure themselves the

pleasure of being together without worrying about Mama Lightfoot’s

wrath, talkative neighbors, prying town marshals, and grass stains.

Despite the rancor of her mother and the whispering of her mother’s

friends, Jane hadn’t really found anything to regret in her choice of a

husband until Emma Lou had been born. Then all the fears her mother had

instilled in her about the penalties inflicted by society upon black

Negroes, especially upon black Negro girls, came to the fore. She was

abysmally stunned by the color of her child, for she had been certain

that since she herself was so fair that her child could not possibly be

as dark as its father. She had been certain that it would be a luscious

admixture, a golden brown with all its mother’s desirable facial

features and its mother’s hair. But she hadn’t reckoned with nature’s

perversity, nor had she taken under consideration the inescapable

fact that some of her ancestors too had been black, and that some of

their color chromosomes were still imbedded within her. Emma Lou had

been fortunate enough to have hair like her mother’s, a thick, curly

black mass of hair, rich and easily controlled, but she had also been

unfortunate enough to have a face as black as her father’s, and a nose

which, while not exactly flat, was as distinctly negroid as her too

thick lips.

Her birth had served no good purpose. It had driven her mother back to

seek the confidence and aid of Maria, and it had given Maria the chance

she had been seeking to break up the undesirable union of her daughter

with what she termed an ordinary black nigger. But Jim’s departure

hadn’t solved matters at all, rather it had complicated them, for

although he was gone, his child remained, a tragic mistake which could

not be stamped out or eradicated even after Jane, by getting a divorce

from Jim and marrying a red-haired Irish Negro, had been accepted back

into blue vein grace.

* * * * *

Emma Lou had always been the alien member of the family and of the

family’s social circle. Her grandmother, now a widow, made her feel

it. Her mother made her feel it. And her Cousin Buddie made her feel

it, to say nothing of the way she was regarded by outsiders. As early

as she could remember, people had been saying to her mother, “What an

extraordinarily black child! Where did you adopt it?” or else, “Such

lovely unniggerish hair on such a niggerish-looking child.” Some had

even been facetious and made suggestions like, “Try some lye, Jane, it

may eat it out. She can’t look any worse.”

Then her mother’s re-marriage had brought another person into her life,

a person destined to give her, while still a young child, much pain and

unhappiness. Aloysius McNamara was his name. He was the bastard son of

an Irish politician and a Negro washerwoman, and until he had been sent

East to a parochial school, Aloysius, so named because that was his

father’s middle name, had always been known as Aloysius Washington, and

the identity of his own father had never been revealed to him by his

proud and humble mother. But since his father had been prevailed upon

to pay for his education, Aloysius’ mother thought it the proper time

to tell her son his true origin and to let him assume his real name.

She had hopes that away from his home town he might be able to pass for

white and march unhindered by bars of color to fame and fortune.

But such was not to be the case, for Emma Lou’s prospective stepfather

was so conscious of the Negro blood in his veins and so bitter because

of it, that he used up whatever talents he had groaning inwardly

at capricious fate, and planning revenge upon the world at large,

especially the black world. For it was Negroes and not whites whom he

blamed for his own, to him, life’s tragedy. He was not fair enough

of skin, despite his mother’s and his own hopes, to pass for white.

There was a brownness in his skin, inherited from his mother, which

immediately marked him out for what he was, despite the red hair and

the Irish blue eyes. And his facial features had been modeled too

generously. He was not thin lipped, nor were his nostrils as delicately

chiseled as they might have been. He was a Negro. There was no getting

around it, although he tried in every possible way to do so.

Finishing school, he had returned West for the express purpose of

making his father accept him publicly and personally advance his

career. He had wanted to be a lawyer and figured that his father’s

political pull was sufficiently strong to draw him beyond race barriers

and set him as one apart. His father had not been entirely cold to

these plans and proposals, but his father’s wife had been. She didn’t

mind her husband giving this nigger bastard of his money, and receiving

him in his home on rare and private occasions. She was trying to be

liberal, but she wasn’t going to have people point to her and say,

“That’s Boss McNamara’s wife. Wonder if that nigger son is his’n or

hers. They do say....” So Aloysius had found himself shunted back

into the black world he so despised. He couldn’t be made to realize

that being a Negro did not necessarily indicate that one must also

be a ne’er-do-well. Had he been white, or so he said, he would have

been a successful criminal lawyer, but being considered black it was

impossible for him ever to be anything more advanced than a pullman car

porter or a dining car waiter, and acting upon this premise, he hadn’t

tried to be anything else.

His only satisfaction in life was the pleasure he derived from

insulting and ignoring the real blacks. Persons of color, mulattoes,

were all right, but he couldn’t stand detestable black Negroes.

Unfortunately, Emma Lou fell into this latter class, and suffered at

his hands accordingly, until he finally ran away from his wife, Emma

Lou, Boise, Negroes, and all, ran away to Canada with Diamond Lil of

“Whore Row.”

* * * * *

Summer vacation was nearly over and it had not yet been decided what

to do with Emma Lou now that she had graduated from high school. She

herself gave no help nor offered any suggestions. As it was, she

really did not care what became of her. After all it didn’t seem to

matter. There was no place in the world for a girl as black as she

anyway. Her grandmother had assured her that she would never find a

husband worth a dime, and her mother had said again and again, “Oh,

if you had only been a boy!” until Emma Lou had often wondered why it

was that people were not able to effect a change of sex or at least a

change of complexion.

It was her Uncle Joe who finally prevailed upon her mother to send her

to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. There, he

reasoned, she would find a larger and more intelligent social circle.

In a city the size of Los Angeles there were Negroes of every class,

color, and social position. Let Emma Lou go there where she would not

be as far away from home as if she were to go to some eastern college.

Jane and Maria, while not agreeing entirely with what Joe said, were

nevertheless glad that at last something which seemed adequate and

sensible could be done for Emma Lou. She was to take the four year

college course, receive a bachelor degree in education, then go South

to teach. That, they thought, was a promising future, and for once in

the eighteen years of Emma Lou’s life every one was satisfied in some

measure. Even Emma Lou grew elated over the prospects of the trip.

Her Uncle Joe’s insistence upon the differences of social contacts

in larger cities intrigued her. Perhaps he was right after all in

continually reasserting to them that as long as one was a Negro, one’s

specific color had little to do with one’s life. Salvation depended

upon the individual. And he also told Emma Lou, during one of their

usual private talks, that it was only in small cities one encountered

stupid color prejudice such as she had encountered among the blue vein

circle in her home town.

“People in large cities,” he had said, “are broad. They do not have

time to think of petty things. The people in Boise are fifty years

behind the times, but you will find that Los Angeles is one of the

world’s greatest and most modern cities, and you will be happy there.”

On arriving in Los Angeles, Emma Lou was so busy observing the colored

inhabitants that she had little time to pay attention to other things.

Palm trees and wild geraniums were pleasant to behold, and such strange

phenomena as pepper trees and century plants had to be admired. They

were very obvious and they were also strange and beautiful, but they

impinged upon only a small corner of Emma Lou’s consciousness. She

was minutely aware of them, necessarily took them in while passing,

viewing the totality without pondering over or lingering to praise

their stylistic details. They were, in this instance, exquisite

theatrical props, rendered insignificant by a more strange and a

more beautiful human pageant. For to Emma Lou, who, in all her life,

had never seen over five hundred Negroes, the spectacle presented by

a community containing over fifty thousand, was sufficient to make

relatively commonplace many more important and charming things than the

far famed natural scenery of Southern California.

She had arrived in Los Angeles a week before registration day at the

university, and had spent her time in being shown and seeing the city.

But whenever these sightseeing excursions took her away from the

sections where Negroes lived, she immediately lost all interest in

what she was being shown. The Pacific Ocean in itself did not cause

her heart beat to quicken, nor did the roaring of its waves find an

emotional echo within her. But on coming upon Bruce’s Beach for colored

people near Redondo, or the little strip of sandied shore they had

appropriated for themselves at Santa Monica, the Pacific Ocean became

an intriguing something to contemplate as a background for their

activities. Everything was interesting as it was patronized, reflected

through, or acquired by Negroes.

Her Uncle Joe had been right. Here, in the colored social circles of

Los Angeles, Emma Lou was certain that she would find many suitable

companions, intelligent, broad-minded people of all complexions,

intermixing and being too occupied otherwise to worry about either

their own skin color or the skin color of those around them. Her Uncle

Joe had said that Negroes were Negroes whether they happened to be

yellow, brown, or black, and a conscious effort to eliminate the darker

elements would neither prove nor solve anything. There was nothing

quite so silly as the creed of the blue veins: “Whiter and whiter,

every generation. The nearer white you are the more white people will

respect you. Therefore all light Negroes marry light Negroes. Continue

to do so generation after generation, and eventually white people will

accept this racially, bastard aristocracy, thus enabling those Negroes

who really matter to escape the social and economic inferiority of the

American Negro.”

Such had been the credo of her grandmother and of her mother and of

their small circle of friends in Boise. But Boise was a provincial

town, given to the molding of provincial people with provincial minds.

Boise was a backwoods town out of the main stream of modern thought

and progress. Its people were cramped and narrow, their intellectual

concepts stereotyped and static. Los Angeles was a happy contrast in

all respects.

* * * * *

On registration day, Emma Lou rushed out to the campus of the

University of Southern California one hour before the registrar’s

office was scheduled to open. She spent the time roaming around,

familiarizing herself with the layout of the campus and learning the

names of the various buildings, some old and vineclad, others new and

shiny in the sun, and watching the crowds of laughing students, rushing

to and fro, greeting one another and talking over their plans for the

coming school year. But her main reason for such an early arrival on

the campus had been to find some of her fellow Negro students. She had

heard that there were to be quite a number enrolled, but in all her

hour’s stroll she saw not one, and finally somewhat disheartened she

got into the line stretched out in front of the registrar’s office,

and, for the moment, became engrossed in becoming a college freshman.

All the while, though, she kept searching for a colored face, but it

was not until she had been duly signed up as a student and sent in

search of her advisor that she saw one. Then three colored girls had

sauntered into the room where she was having a conference with her

advisor, sauntered in, arms interlocked, greeted her advisor, then

sauntered out again. Emma Lou had wanted to rush after them--to

introduce herself, but of course it had been impossible under the

circumstances. She had immediately taken a liking to all three, each of

whom was what is known in the parlance of the black belt as high brown,

with modishly-shingled bobbed hair and well formed bodies, fashionably

attired in flashy sport garments. From then on Emma Lou paid little

attention to the business of choosing subjects and class hours, so

little attention in fact that the advisor thought her exceptionally

tractable and somewhat dumb. But she liked students to come that way.

It made the task of being advisor easy. One just made out the program

to suit oneself, and had no tedious explanations to make as to why the

student could not have such and such a subject at such and such an

hour, and why such and such a professor’s class was already full.

After her program had been made out, Emma Lou was directed to the

bursar’s office to pay her fees. While going down the stairs she almost

bumped into two dark-brown-skinned boys, obviously brothers if not

twins, arguing as to where they should go next. One insisted that they

should go back to the registrar’s office. The other was being equally

insistent that they should go to the gymnasium and make an appointment

for their required physical examination. Emma Lou boldly stopped when

she saw them, hoping they would speak, but they merely glanced up at

her and continued their argument, bringing cards and pamphlets out of

their pockets for reference and guidance. Emma Lou wanted to introduce

herself to them, but she was too bashful to do so. She wasn’t yet used

to going to school with other Negro students, and she wasn’t exactly

certain how one went about becoming acquainted. But she finally decided

that she had better let the advances come from the others, especially

if they were men. There was nothing forward about her, and since she

was a stranger it was no more than right that the old-timers should

make her welcome. Still, if these had been girls ..., but they weren’t,

so she continued her way down the stairs.

In the bursar’s office, she was somewhat overjoyed at first to find

that she had fallen into line behind another colored girl who turned

around immediately, and, after saying hello, announced in a loud, harsh

voice:

“My feet are sure some tired!”

Emma Lou was so taken aback that she couldn’t answer. People in college

didn’t talk that way. But meanwhile the girl was continuing:

“Ain’t this registration a mess?”

Two white girls who had fallen into line behind Emma Lou snickered.

Emma Lou answered by shaking her head. The girl continued:

“I’ve been standin’ in line and climbin’ stairs and talkin’ and

a-signin’ till I’m just ’bout done for.”

“It is tiresome,” Emma Lou returned softly, hoping the girl would take

a hint and lower her own strident voice. But she didn’t.

“Tiresome ain’t no name for it,” she declared more loudly than ever

before, then, “Is you a new student?”

“I am,” answered Emma Lou, putting much emphasis on the “I am.”

She wanted the white people who were listening to know that she knew

her grammar if this other person didn’t. “Is you,” indeed! If this girl

was a specimen of the Negro students with whom she was to associate,

she most certainly did not want to meet another one. But it couldn’t

be possible that all of them--those three girls and those two boys for

instance--were like this girl. Emma Lou was unable to imagine how such

a person had ever gotten out of high school. Where on earth could she

have gone to high school? Surely not in the North. Then she must be a

southerner. That’s what she was, a southerner--Emma Lou curled her lips

a little--no wonder the colored people in Boise spoke as they did about

southern Negroes and wished that they would stay South. Imagine any

one preparing to enter college saying “Is you,” and, to make it worse,

right before all these white people, these staring white people, so

eager and ready to laugh. Emma Lou’s face burned.

“Two mo’, then I goes in my sock.”

Emma Lou was almost at the place where she was ready to take even

this statement literally, and was on the verge of leaving the line.

Supposing this creature did “go in her sock!” God forbid!

“Wonder where all the spades keep themselves? I ain’t seen but two

’sides you.”

“I really do not know,” Emma Lou returned precisely and chillily. She

had no intentions of becoming friendly with this sort of person. Why

she would be ashamed even to be seen on the street with her, dressed as

she was in a red-striped sport suit, a white hat, and white shoes and

stockings. Didn’t she know that black people had to be careful about

the colors they affected?

The girl had finally reached the bursar’s window and was paying her

fees, and loudly differing with the cashier about the total amount due.

“I tell you it ain’t that much,” she shouted through the window bars.

“I figured it up myself before I left home.”

The cashier obligingly turned to her adding machine and once more

obtained the same total. When shown this, the girl merely grinned,

examined the list closely, and said:

“I’m gonna’ pay it, but I still think you’re wrong.”

Finally she moved away from the window, but not before she had turned

to Emma Lou and said, “You’re next,” and then proceeded to wait until

Emma Lou had finished.

Emma Lou vainly sought some way to escape, but was unable to do so, and

had no choice but to walk with the girl to the registrar’s office where

they had their cards stamped in return for the bursar’s receipt. This

done, they went onto the campus together. Hazel Mason was the girl’s

name. Emma Lou had fully expected it to be either Hyacinth or Geranium.

Hazel was from Texas, Prairie Valley, Texas, and she told Emma Lou that

her father, having become quite wealthy when oil had been found on his

farm lands, had been enabled to realize two life ambitions--obtain a

Packard touring car and send his only daughter to a “fust-class” white

school.

Emma Lou had planned to loiter around the campus. She was still eager

to become acquainted with the colored members of the student body, and

this encounter with the crass and vulgar Hazel Mason had only made her

the more eager. She resented being approached by any one so flagrantly

inferior, any one so noticeably a typical southern darky, who had no

business obtruding into the more refined scheme of things. Emma Lou

planned to lose her unwelcome companion somewhere on the campus so that

she could continue unhindered her quest for agreeable acquaintances.

But Hazel was as anxious to meet some one as was Emma Lou, and having

found her was not going to let her get away without a struggle. She,

too, was new to this environment and in a way was more lonely and eager

for the companionship of her own kind than Emma Lou, for never before

had she come into such close contact with so many whites. Her life had

been spent only among Negroes. Her fellow pupils and teachers in school

had always been colored, and as she confessed to Emma Lou, she couldn’t

get used “to all these white folks.”

“Honey, I was just achin’ to see a black face,” she had said, and,

though Emma Lou was experiencing the same ache, she found herself

unable to sympathize with the other girl, for Emma Lou classified Hazel

as a barbarian who had most certainly not come from a family of best

people. No doubt her mother had been a washerwoman. No doubt she had

innumerable relatives and friends all as ignorant and as ugly as she.

There was no sense in any one having a face as ugly as Hazel’s, and

Emma Lou thanked her stars that though she was black, her skin was

not rough and pimply, nor was her hair kinky, nor were her nostrils

completely flattened out until they seemed to spread all over her face.

No wonder people were prejudiced against dark skinned people when they

were so ugly, so haphazard in their dress, and so boisterously mannered

as was this present specimen. She herself was black, but nevertheless

she had come from a good family, and she could easily take her place in

a society of the right sort of people.

The two strolled along the lawn-bordered gravel path which led to a

vine-covered building at the end of the campus. Hazel never ceased

talking. She kept shouting at Emma Lou, shouting all sorts of personal

intimacies as if she were desirous of the whole world hearing them.

There was no necessity for her to talk so loudly, no necessity for her

to afford every one on the crowded campus the chance to stare and laugh

at them as they passed. Emma Lou had never before been so humiliated

and so embarrassed. She felt that she must get away from her offensive

companion. What did she care if she had to hurt her feelings to do so.

The more insulting she could be now, the less friendly she would have

to be in the future.

“Good-by,” 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 in the car parked

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 at 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 into 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

fiance 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 on to 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

every nerve 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 “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 their 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

wrist watch, then got up from the bench.

“I’m glad to have met you. I’ve got to see my advisor at ten-thirty.

Good-by.” 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 differences 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-by.”

“Good-by,” 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 which 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 strivings,

there had been the academic routine to which she had 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.

In time Emma Lou became certain that it was because of her intimacy

with Hazel that the people on the campus she really wished to be

friendly with paid her so little attention. Hazel was a veritable

clown. She went scooting about the campus, cutting capers, playing the

darky for the amused white students. Any time Hazel asked or answered a

question in any of the lecture halls, there was certain to be laughter.

She had a way of phrasing what she wished to say in a manner which was

invariably laugh provoking. The very tone and quality of her voice

designated her as a minstrel type. In the gymnasium she would do buck

and wing dances and play low-down blues on the piano. She was a pariah

among her own people because she did not seem to know, as they knew,

that Negroes could not afford to be funny in front of white people even

if that was their natural inclination. Negroes must always be sober

and serious in order to impress white people with their adaptability

and non-difference in all salient characteristics save skin color. All

of the Negro students on the campus, except Emma Lou, laughed at her

openly and called her Topsy. Emma Lou felt sorry for her although she,

too, regretted her comic propensities and wished that she would be less

the vaudevillian and more the college student.

Besides Hazel, there was only one other person on the campus who was

friendly with Emma Lou. This was Grace Giles, also a black girl, who

was registered in the School of Music. The building in which she had

her classes was located some distance away, and Grace did not get over

to the main campus grounds very often, but when she did, she always

looked for Emma Lou and made welcome overtures of friendship. It was

her second year in the university, and yet, she too seemed to be on the

outside of things. She didn’t seem to be invited to the parties and

dances, nor was she a member of the Greek letter sorority which the

colored girls had organized. Emma Lou asked her why.

“Have they pledged you?” was Grace Giles’ answer.

“Why no.”

“And they won’t either.”

“Why?” Emma Lou asked surprised.

“Because you are not a high brown or half-white.”

Emma Lou had thought this too, but she had been loathe to believe it.

“You’re silly, Grace. Why--Verne belongs.”

“Yeah,” Grace had sneered, “Verne, a bishop’s daughter with plenty of

coin and a big Buick. Why shouldn’t they ask her?”

Emma Lou did not know what to make of this. She did not want to believe

that the same color prejudice which existed among the blue veins in

Boise also existed among the colored college students. Grace Giles was

just hypersensitive. She wasn’t taking into consideration the fact that

she was not on the campus regularly and thus could not expect to be

treated as if she were. Emma Lou fully believed that had Grace been a

regularly enrolled student like herself, she would have found things

different, and she was also certain that both she and Grace would be

asked to join the sorority in due time.

But they weren’t. Nor did an entire term in the school change things

one whit. The Christmas holidays had come and gone and Emma Lou had

not been invited to one of the many parties. She and Grace and Hazel

bound themselves together and sought their extra-collegiate pleasures

among people not on the campus. Hazel began to associate with a group

of housemaids and mature youths who worked only when they had to,

and played the pool rooms and the housemaids as long as they proved

profitable. Hazel was a welcome addition to this particular group what

with her car and her full pocketbook. She had never been proficient in

her studies, had always found it impossible to keep pace with the other

students, and, finally realizing that she did not belong and perhaps

never would, had decided to “go to the devil,” and be done with it.

It was not long before Hazel was absent from the campus more often

than she was present. Going to cabarets and parties, and taking long

drunken midnight drives made her more and more unwilling and unable

to undertake the scholastic grind on the next morning. Just before

the mid-term examinations, she was advised by the faculty to drop out

of school until the next year, and to put herself in the hands of a

tutor during the intervening period. It was evident that her background

was not all that it should be; her preparatory work had not been

sufficiently complete to enable her to continue in college. As it was,

they told her, she was wasting her time. So Hazel disappeared from the

campus and was said to have gone back to Texas. “Serves her right, glad

she’s gone,” was the verdict of her colored campus fellows.

The Christmas holidays for Emma Lou were dull and uneventful. The

people she lived with were rheumatic and not much given to yuletide

festivities. It didn’t seem like Christmas to Emma Lou anyway. There

was no snow on the ground, and the sun was shining as brightly and as

warmly as it had shone during the late summer and early autumn months.

The wild geraniums still flourished, the orange trees were blossoming,

and the whole southland seemed to be preparing for the annual New

Year’s Day Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena.

Emma Lou received a few presents from home, and a Christmas greeting

card from Grace Giles. That was all. On Christmas Day she and Grace

attended church in the morning, and spent the afternoon at the

home of one of Grace’s friends. Emma Lou never liked the people to

whom Grace introduced her. They were a dull, commonplace lot for

the most part, people from Georgia, Grace’s former home, untutored

people who didn’t really matter. Emma Lou borrowed a word from her

grandmother and classified them as “fuddlers,” because they seemed to

fuddle everything--their language, their clothes, their attempts at

politeness, and their efforts to appear more intelligent than they

really were.

The holidays over, Emma Lou returned to school a little reluctantly.

She wasn’t particularly interested in her studies, but having nothing

else to do kept up in them and made high grades. Meanwhile she had

been introduced to a number of young men and gone out with them

occasionally. They too were friends of Grace’s and of the same caliber

as Grace’s other friends. There were no college boys among them except

Joe Lane who was flunking out in the School of Dentistry. He did not

interest Emma Lou. As it was with Joe, so it was with all the other

boys. She invariably picked them to pieces when they took her out, and

remained so impassive to their emotional advances that they were soon

glad to be on their way and let her be. Emma Lou was determined not to

go out of her class, determined either to associate with the “right

sort of people” or else to remain to herself.

Had any one asked Emma Lou what she meant by the “right sort of people”

she would have found herself at a loss for a comprehensive answer.

She really didn’t know. She had a vague idea that those people on the

campus who practically ignored her were the only people with whom she

should associate. These people, for the most part, were children of

fairly well-to-do families from Louisiana, Texas and Georgia, who,

having made nest eggs, had journeyed to the West for the same reasons

that her grandparents at an earlier date had also journeyed West.

They wanted to live where they would have greater freedom and greater

opportunity for both their children and themselves. Then, too, the

World War had given impetus to this westward movement. There was more

industry in the West and thus more chances for money to be made, and

more opportunities to invest this money profitably in property and

progeny.

The greater number of them were either mulattoes or light brown in

color. In their southern homes they had segregated themselves from

their darker skinned brethren and they continued this practice in the

North. They went to the Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Catholic churches,

and though they were not as frankly organized into a blue vein society

as were the Negroes of Boise, they nevertheless kept more or less to

themselves. They were not insistent that their children get “whiter

and whiter every generation”, but they did want to keep their children

and grandchildren from having dark complexions. A light brown was the

favored color; it was therefore found expedient to exercise caution

when it came to mating.

The people who, in Emma Lou’s phrase, really mattered, the business

men, the doctors, the lawyers, the dentists, the more moneyed pullman

porters, hotel waiters, bank janitors, and majordomos, in fact all of

the Negro leaders and members of the Negro upper class, were either

light skinned themselves or else had light skinned wives. A wife of

dark complexion was considered a handicap unless she was particularly

charming, wealthy, or beautiful. An ordinary looking dark woman was

no suitable mate for a Negro man of prominence. The college youths

on whom the future of the race depended practiced this precept of

their elders religiously. It was not the girls in the school who were

prejudiced--they had no reason to be, but they knew full well that the

boys with whom they wished to associate, their future husbands, would

not tolerate a dark girl unless she had, like Verne, many things to

compensate for her dark skin. Thus they did not encourage a friendship

with some one whom they knew didn’t belong. Thus they did not even

pledge girls like Grace, Emma Lou, and Hazel into their sorority, for

they knew that it would make them the more miserable to attain the

threshold only to have the door shut in their faces.

* * * * *

Summer vacation time came and Emma Lou went back to Boise. She was

thoroughly discouraged and depressed. She had been led to expect

so much pleasure from her first year in college and in Los Angeles;

but she had found that the people in large cities were after all

no different from people in small cities. Her Uncle Joe had been

wrong--her mother and grandmother had been right. There was no place in

the world for a dark girl.

Being at home depressed her all the more. There was absolutely nothing

for her to do nor any place for her to go. For a month or more she

just lingered around the house, bored by her mother’s constant and

difficult attempts to be maternal, and irritated by her Cousin Buddy’s

freshness. Adolescent boys were such a nuisance. The only bright spot

on the horizon was the Sunday School Union picnic scheduled to be held

during the latter part of July. It was always the crowning social

event of the summer season among the colored citizens of Boise. Both

the Methodists and Baptists missions cooperated in this affair and had

their numbers augmented by all the denominationally unattached members

of the community. It was always a gala, democratic affair designed to

provide a pleasant day in the out-of-doors. It was, besides the annual

dance fostered by the local chapters of the Masons and the Elks, the

only big community gathering to which the entire colored population of

Boise looked forward.

Picnic day came, and Emma Lou accompanied her mother, her uncle, and

her cousin to Bedney’s Meadow, a green, heavily forested acre of park

land, which lay on the outskirts of the city, surrounded on three sides

by verdant foothills. The day went by pleasantly enough. There were the

usually heavily laden wooden tables, to which all adjourned in the late

afternoon, and there were foot races, games, and canoeing.

Emma Lou took part in all these activities and was surprised to find

that she was having a good time. The company was congenial, and she

found that since she had gone away to college she had become somewhat

of a personage. Every one seemed to be going out of his way to be

congenial to her. The blue veins did not rule this affair. They were,

in fact, only a minority element, and, for one of the few times of

the year, mingled freely and unostentatiously with their lower caste

brethren.

All during the day, Emma Lou found herself paired off with a chap by

the name of Weldon Taylor. In the evening they went for a stroll up

the precipitous footpaths in the hills which grew up from the meadow.

Weldon Taylor was a newcomer in the West trying to earn sufficient

money to re-enter an eastern school and finish his medical education.

Emma Lou rather liked him. She admired his tall, slender body, the

deep burnish of his bronze colored skin, and his mass of black curly

hair. Here, thought Emma Lou, is the type of man I like. Only she did

wish that his skin had been colored light brown instead of dark brown.

It was better if she was to marry that she did not get a dark skin

mate. Her children must not suffer as she had and would suffer.

The two talked of commonplace things as they walked along, comparing

notes on their school experiences, and talking of their professors and

their courses of study. It was dusk now and the sun had disappeared

behind the snow capped mountains. The sky was a colorful haze, a master

artist’s canvas on which the colors of day were slowly being dominated

by the colors of night. Weldon drew Emma Lou off the little path they

had been following, and led her to a huge bowlder which jutted out,

elbow like, from the side of a hill, and which was hidden from the

meadow below by clumps of bushes. They sat down, his arm slipped around

her waist, and, as the darkness of night more and more conquered the

evanescent light of day, their lips met, and Emma Lou grew lax in

Weldon’s arms....

When they finally returned to the picnic grounds all had left save a

few stragglers like themselves who had sauntered away from the main

party. These made up a laughing, half-embarrassed group, who collected

their baskets and reluctantly withdrew from the meadow to begin the

long walk back to their homes. Emma Lou and Weldon soon managed to

fall at the end of the procession, walking along slowly, his arm

around her waist. Emma Lou felt an ecstasy surging through her at

this moment greater than she had ever known before. This had been her

first intimate sexual contact, her first awareness of the physical and

emotional pleasures able to be enjoyed by two human beings, a woman and

a man. She felt some magnetic force drawing her to this man walking by

her side, which made her long to feel the pleasure of his body against

hers, made her want to know once more the pleasure which had attended

the union of their lips, the touching of their tongues. It was with

a great effort that she walked along apparently calm, for inside she

was seething. Her body had become a kennel for clashing, screaming

compelling urges and desires. She loved this man. She had submitted

herself to him, had gladly suffered momentary physical pain in order to

be introduced into a new and incomparably satisfying paradise.

Not for one moment did Emma Lou consider regretting the loss of her

virtue, not once did any of her mother’s and grandmother’s warnings and

solicitations revive themselves and cause her conscience to plague her.

She had finally found herself a mate; she had finally come to know the

man she should love, some inescapable force had drawn them together,

had made them feel from the first moment of their introduction that

they belonged to one another, and that they were destined to explore

nature’s mysteries together. Life was not so cruel after all. There

were some compensatory moments. Emma Lou believed that at last she had

found happiness, that at last she had found her man.

Of course, she wasn’t going back to school. She was going to stay

in Boise, marry Weldon, and work with him until they should have

sufficient money to go East, where he could re-enter medical school,

and she could keep a home for him and spur him on. A glorious panorama

of the future unrolled itself in her mind. There were no black spots in

it, no shadows, nothing but luminous landscapes, ethereal in substance.

It was the way of Emma Lou always to create her worlds within her own

mind without taking under consideration the fact that other people and

other elements, not contained within herself, would also have to aid in

their molding. She had lived to herself for so long, had been shut out

from the stream of things in which she was interested for such a long

period during the formative years of her life, that she considered her

own imaginative powers omniscient. Thus she constructed a future world

of love on one isolated experience, never thinking for the moment that

the other party concerned might not be of the same mind. She had been

lifted into a superlatively perfect emotional and physical state. It

was unthinkable, incongruous, that Weldon, too, had not been similarly

lifted. He had for the moment shared her ecstasy, therefore, according

to Emma Lou’s line of reasoning, he would as effectively share what she

imagined would be the fruits of that ecstatic moment.

The next two weeks passed quickly and happily. Weldon called on her

almost every night, took her for long walks, and thrilled her with

his presence and his love making. Never before in her life had Emma

Lou been so happy. She forgot all the sad past. Forgot what she had

hitherto considered the tragedy of her birth, forgot the social

isolation of her childhood and of her college days. What did being

black, what did the antagonistic mental attitudes of the people who

really mattered mean when she was in love? Her mother and her Uncle Joe

were so amazed at the change in her that they became afraid, sensed

danger, and began to be on the lookout for some untoward development;

for hitherto Emma Lou had always been sullen and morose and impertinent

to all around the house. She had always been the anti-social creature

they had caused her to feel she was and, since she was made to feel

that she was a misfit, she had encroached upon their family life

and sociabilities only to the extent that being in the house made

necessary. But now she was changed--she had become a vibrant, joyful

being. There was always a smile on her face, always a note of joy in

her voice as she spoke or sang. She even made herself agreeable to her

Cousin Buddy, who in the past she had either ignored or else barely

tolerated.

“She must be in love, Joe,” her mother half whined.

“That’s good,” he answered laconically. “It probably won’t last long.

It will serve to take her mind off herself.”

“But suppose she gets foolish?” Jane had insisted, remembering no doubt

her own foolishness, during a like period of her own life, with Emma

Lou’s father.

“She’ll take care of herself,” Joe had returned with an assurance he

did not feel. He, too, was worried, but he was also pleased at the

change in Emma Lou. His only fear was that perhaps in the end she would

make herself more miserable than she had ever been before. He did

not know much about this Weldon fellow, who seemed to be a reliable

enough chap, but no one had any way of discerning whether or no his

intentions were entirely honorable. It was best, thought Joe, not to

worry about such things. If, for the present, Emma Lou was more happy

than she had ever been before, there would be time enough to worry

about the future when its problems materialized.

“Don’t you worry about Emma Lou. She’s got sense.”

“But, Joe, suppose she does forget herself with this man? He is

studying to be a doctor and he may not want a wife, especially when....”

“Damn it, Jane!” her brother snapped at her. “Do you think every one is

like you? The boy seems to like her.”

“Men like any one they can use, but you know as well as I that no

professional man is going to marry a woman dark as Emma Lou.”

“Men marry any one they love, just as you and I did.”

“But I was foolish.”

“Well?”

“That’s right--Be unconcerned. That’s right--Let her go to the devil.

There’s no hope for her anyway. Oh--why--why did I marry Jim Morgan?”

and she had gone into the usual crying fit which inevitably followed

this self-put question.

Then, without any warning, as if to put an end to all problems, Weldon

decided to become a Pullman porter. He explained to Emma Lou that he

could make more money on the railroad than he could as a hotel waiter

in Boise. It was necessary for his future that he make as much money

as possible in as short a time as possible. Emma Lou saw the logic

of this and agreed that it was the best possible scheme, until she

realized that it meant his going away from Boise, perhaps forever.

Oakland, California, was to be his headquarters, and he, being a new

man, would not have a regular run. It was possible that he might be

sent to different sections of the country each and every time he made a

trip. There was no way of his knowing before he reported for duty just

where he might be sent. It might be Boise or Palm Beach or Albany or

New Orleans. One never knew. That was the life of the road, and one had

to accept it in order to make money.

It made Emma Lou shiver to hear him talk so dispassionately about the

matter. There didn’t seem to be the least note of regret in his voice,

the least suggestion that he hated to leave her or that he would miss

her, and, for the first time since the night of their physical union,

Emma Lou began to realize that perhaps after all he did not feel

toward her as she did toward him. He couldn’t possibly love her as

much as she loved him, and, at the same time, remain so unconcerned

about having to part from her. There was something radically wrong

here, something conclusive and unexpected which was going to hurt her,

going to plunge her back into unhappiness once more. Then she realized

that not once had he ever spoken of marriage or even hinted that their

relationship would continue indefinitely. He had said that he loved

her, he had treated her kindly, and had seemed as thrilled as she

over their physical contacts. But now it seemed that since he was no

longer going to be near her, no longer going to need her body, he had

forgotten that he loved her. It was then that all the old preachments

of her mother and grandmother were resurrected and began to swirl

through her mind. Hadn’t she been warned that men didn’t marry black

girls? Hadn’t she been told that they would only use her for their

sexual convenience? That was the case with Weldon! He hadn’t cared

about her in the first place. He had taken up with her only because he

was a stranger in the town and lonesome for a companion, and she, like

a damn fool, had submitted herself to him! And now that he was about

to better his condition, about to go some place where he would have a

wider circle of acquaintances, she was to be discarded and forgotten.

Thus Emma Lou reasoned to herself and grew bitter. It never occurred

to her that the matter of her color had never once entered the mind of

Weldon. Not once did she consider that he was acting toward her as he

would have acted toward any girl under similar circumstances, whether

her face had been white, yellow, brown, or black. Emma Lou did not

understand that Weldon was just a selfish normal man and not a color

prejudiced one, at least not while he was resident in a community where

the girls were few, and there were none of his college friends about

to tease him for liking “dark meat.” She did not know that for over a

year he had been traveling about from town to town, always seeking a

place where money was more plentiful and more easily saved, and that

in every town he had managed to find a girl, or girls, who made it

possible for him to continue his grind without being totally deprived

of pleasurable moments. To Emma Lou there could only be one reason for

his not having loved her as she had loved him. She was a black girl and

no professional man could afford to present such a wife in the best

society. It was the tragic feature of her life once more asserting

itself. There could be no happiness in life for any woman whose face

was as black as hers.

Believing this more intensely than ever before Emma Lou yet felt that

she must manage in some way to escape both home and school. That she

must find happiness somewhere else. The idea her Uncle Joe had given

her about the provinciality of people in small towns re-entered her

mind. After all Los Angeles, too, was a small town mentally, peopled by

mentally small southern Negroes. It was no better than Boise. She was

now determined to go East where life was more cosmopolitan and people

were more civilized. To this end she begged her mother and uncle to

send her East to school.

“Can’t you ever be satisfied?”

“Now Jane,” Joe as usual was trying to keep the peace----

“Now Jane, nothing! I never saw such an ungrateful child.”

“I’m not ungrateful. I’m just unhappy. I don’t like that school. I

don’t want to go there any more.”

“Well, you’ll either go there or else stay home.” Thus Jane ended the

discussion and could not be persuaded to reopen it.

And rather than remain home Emma Lou returned to Los Angeles and spent

another long miserable, uneventful year in the University of Southern

California, drawing more and more within herself and becoming more and

more bitter. When vacation time came again she got herself a job as

maid in a theater, rather than return home, and studied stenography

during her spare hours. School began again and Emma Lou re-entered

with more determination than ever to escape should the chance present

itself. It did, and once more Emma Lou fled into an unknown town to

escape the haunting chimera of intra-racial color prejudice.