The Blacker the Berry

Emma Lou is plagued by the color of her skin. She was born with skin that is too black. Her mother was a fairer-skinned African-American, as was the majority of her mother’s family, but her father, who left her mother soon after Emma Lou was born, was a dark-skinned black man. Her family constantly regrets the color of her skin. She and her family tried to lighten her skin with creams and bleaching, but to no avail. Emma Lou wishes that she had been a boy. Her mother has always told her "that a black boy could get along, but that a black girl would never know anything but sorrow and disappointment."[1]

Thoughts of her skin and family consume Emma Lou, even at her high school graduation. She is the only "Negro pupil in the entire school,"[1] and this fact is made even more obvious by the white graduation robes the graduates wear, to the dismay of Emma Lou. The only thing Emma Lou can concern herself with is the color of her skin. Her graduation ceremony takes a back seat to thoughts about her skin.

The summer after Emma Lou’s high school graduation was coming to a close. Emma Lou had still not decided what she would do next, as it did not seem to matter much. She is a dark skinned girl, and therefore, she thought, she would never amount to anything. Her Uncle Joe suggested that she go to college at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she would find other Negroes with whom she could associate. She would earn a bachelor’s degree in education and then move to the south to teach. Uncle Joe believed that smaller towns, such as Boise, "encouraged stupid color prejudice such as she encountered among the blue vein circle in her home town." Emma Lou’s maternal grandmother was closely associated with the blue veins in Boise, a group of people who only accepted fair-skinned individuals. This group, including Emma Lou’s grandmother, looked down upon Emma Lou because her skin was so dark. Uncle Joe thought that Emma Lou would find happiness in Los