The Blacker the Berry (Dover Literature: African American)

by Wallace Thurman

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Both were feverishly apprehensive at all times. They quarreled frequently, but would hasten to make amends to one another, so afraid were they that the first one to become angry might make a bolt for freedom. Alva drank more and more. Geraldine worked, saved, and schemed, always planning and praying that she would be able to get away first.

What she needed to do now was to accept her black skin as being real and unchangeable, to realize that certain things were, had been, and would be, and with this in mind begin life anew, always fighting, not so much for acceptance by other people, but for acceptance of herself by herself. In the future she would be eminently selfish. If people came into her life—well and good. If they didn’t—she would live anyway, seeking to find herself and achieving meanwhile economic and mental independence. Then possibly, as Campbell Kitchen had said, life would open up for her, for it seemed as if its doors yielded more easily to the casual, self-centered individual than to the ranting, praying pilgrim. After all, it was the end that mattered, and one only wasted time and strength seeking facile open-sesame means instead of pushing along a more difficult and direct path.