The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life

Minstrel shows are a deeply racist part of American history, and the harmful stereotypes that they perpetuated were, and still are, responsible for some of the most insidious prejudices of white Americans. Minstrel shows were put on by troupes of typically white actors, who performed short dramatic works, often in blackface and meant to be humorous, about Black Americans. They employed a cast of stock characters whom white people would have likely recognized and typically depicted Black Americans as lazy, unintelligent, and “promiscuous.” The most famous character from minstrel shows was “Jim Crow,” whose name became the de facto title of the set of laws and statutes in the South that enforced segregation during the Reconstruction Era. Although such productions existed before the Civil War, they became part of a set of postbellum cultural traditions meant to shore up white supremacy and ensure the continued mistreatment of Black Americans.

Truman notes the tendency of marginalized groups to find even more stigmatized subsets of society to look down upon in an effort to lift themselves up. Minstrel shows can be understood as part of this phenomenon in that they were often acted in and attended by the white working class and working poor. Economically disadvantaged white people, especially in the South, struggled financially during the Reconstruction era and felt unrepresented in government and left out of the scant and insufficient attempts to assist formerly enslaved people in attaining some kind of success in freedom. They often lived near Black Americans, and Black Americans thus became their targets, not only through minstrel shows but also through harassment, terrorism, violence, and lynching.

Minstrelsy becomes a motif within The Blacker the Berry largely through the character of Emma Lou, whose descriptions of people with darker skin frequently employ descriptive language associated with “minstrelsy.” She even uses the term minstrel to describe people like Hazel, of whom she notes “the very tone and quality of her voice designated her as a minstrel type” (23). She goes on to describe Hazel’s loudness, poor grammar, and what Emma Lou feels are the performative antics Hazel displays in social situations.

Emma Lou shares this prejudice with many of her Black peers. The students at USC often describe Hazel as “Topsy,” a fictional character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin whose representation was stereotypical, unflattering, and racist. Emma Lou also describes Hazel’s physical characteristics using language borrowed from the world of minstrelsy, fixating on the red of Hazel’s lips and car, the darkness of her face, and the flashiness of her clothes. Thurman shows his readers that the tradition of minstrel shows has not only provided white Americans with a set of damaging stereotypes to apply to Black people but that it is possible for Black Americans to internalize and reproduce these stereotypes as well. Although racism originates in white society, Emma Lou learned to attach minstrelsy to identity directly from the Black members of her own family.

The Blacker the Berry repeatedly employs descriptions of jazz as a motif within the sections set in Harlem. Jazz is a form of music that first emerged in Black communities during the early 20th century. It is characterized by a syncopated rhythm, improvisation, call and response, and blue notes, and although some jazz uses guitar, it is most frequently associated with piano, brass, and woodwinds. Dixieland, swing, bebop, and free are major substyles within the genre. Jazz is one of America’s most important contributions to Modernism and world music as a whole. Some noteworthy Harlem Renaissance-era jazz musicians were Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Count Basie. Like blues, jazz initially explored the Black experience in America and spoke to issues such as racism, migration, and new forms of Black identity.

Harlem was the epicenter of jazz, and people flocked to hear its most famous musicians at venues such as the Cotton Club, the Alhambra Ballroom, and the Apollo Theater. Many of these clubs, however, allowed Black musicians but not Black patrons and thus became emblematic of the era’s racist cultural traditions and segregationist policies, a role they play in the text. Emma Lou’s first experience of jazz is at a Small’s Paradise, a club that allows Black guests but is mostly patronized by white people on the night Emma Lou visits. Emma Lou herself visits the club with her white employer and her brother, who hopes to learn something about the “authentic” Black experience in Harlem. Jazz was seen as a cultural piece of what Alain Locke termed “The New Negro” and a critical component of the movement to help white Americans reconceptualize African Americans through their artistic contributions to the world of arts and letters. To be sure, many white Americans were fascinated by jazz’s new sound, its syncopation and frenetic energy. Likewise, jazz was a target for white supremacists, who characterized it as sinful, and it subsequently became a tool for white people rebelling against the status quo. Emma Lou’s visit to Small’s Paradise is illustrative of these broader trends, and it is an important scene within The Blacker the Berry.

Jazz also becomes part of Emma Lou’s self-discovery, for she finds herself, on multiple occasions, caught up in the feverish beat of the music, and she has near-ecstatic experiences while listening and dancing to jazz. These are moments in which Emma Lou rejects respectability politics, and because of Thurman’s interest in complex, often problematic representations of Black identity, Emma Lou’s interest in jazz functions as a way to communicate the complexity of her identity: She wants to find the “right” kind of people, but she is also profoundly moved by the wrong kind. In The Blacker the Berry, jazz is emblematic of the development of Black identity itself and the often-fraught process of figuring out how to define oneself against the backdrop of racism, colorism, and the tight confines of social acceptability. Its syncopated rhythms and improvisation speak to the individualized process of becoming that Black Americans, including Emma Lou, underwent during this era of great cultural change and upheaval.