American author Wallace Thurman published The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life in 1929. The title refers to the African American folk saying “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice,” which originated as a compliment to people of color. A canonical text of the Harlem Renaissance, Thurman’s novel explores colorism, Black respectability politics, and racism within Black beauty standards. The Blacker the Berry traces the life of Emma Lou Morgan, a young African American woman, as she makes her way from her childhood home in Boise to the University of Southern California and, ultimately, 1920s Harlem.

A key figure within the Harlem Renaissance’s third wave, Thurman sought to create complex, multifaceted Black characters. Whereas earlier waves of Harlem Renaissance authors felt that African Americans could gain equal footing with their white counterparts through depicting Black characters who were upstanding, ethical, and hardworking, Thurman found that kind of representation flat and unrealistic. His goal was to present African American life as it really was, and that included the lower as well as the upper classes and the morally dubious alongside the honorable.

This guide refers to the 2020 DigiReads reprint edition.

Content Warning: The source material contains depictions of racism and colorism, including offensive pejoratives and slurs, including the n-word, in reference to African Americans. This guide only replicates pejorative terms in direct quotations. The source material and this guide also contain references to enslavers sexually abusing and assaulting enslaved women.  

Plot Summary

The novel opens as its protagonist, Emma Lou Morgan, graduates high school in Boise, Idaho. The only Black student in her school, Emma Lou longs for her own community. She feels out of place not only among her classmates but in her family; her mother, grandmother, and uncle all have much lighter skin tones than she does, and her mother and grandmother wish that she more closely resembled them. Emma Lou’s family and the racially homogenous Boise community are deeply colorist, meaning they view Black people with lighter skin as superior to Black people with darker skin like Emma Lou. She struggles to find self-acceptance in this atmosphere, and when her uncle suggests she attend teacher’s college at the University of Southern California, she jumps at the chance to leave her family behind. She hopes to find a less prejudicial climate in Los Angeles and a social circle made up of Black students like herself.

She is not successful in either endeavor, and at USC, Emma Lou experiences as much colorism as she did in Boise. She is snubbed by her Black peers who have lighter skin than she does, and the only students who befriend her are girls whom Emma Lou deems unacceptable based on their own dark skin and uneducated demeanor. As unhappy as it makes Emma Lou to be judged for the color of her skin, she is deeply colorist herself, and this section of the novel explores the ways she perpetuates the very kind of racism she experiences. After a short-lived and unsatisfying relationship with a boy whom she is sure rejects her because of her Blackness, Emma Lou decides to leave school and try to obtain a secretarial position in Harlem. She hopes that there will be less stigma associated with having dark skin there and that she will be able to obtain employment that will put her into contact with the “right kind” of people. Even though she has experienced prejudice because of her dark skin, Emma Lou associates high class and “superiority” with light skin because of her upbringing.

Her early experiences in Harlem mimic her time at USC. Emma Lou is shunned by the “respectable” people with whom she tries to work or associate. She has unsatisfying relationships with men who either fail to interest her, use her, or are ashamed of her Blackness. Her long-term romantic partner in Harlem is a “ladies’ man” named Alva with an alcohol addiction, whose interest in Emma Lou is at least partially due to her willingness to support him financially. Emma Lou receives frequent letters from her family asking her to return home. They are scandalized by her solitary life in Harlem and her sexual activity. Emma Lou, however, rejects the notion that young women need to be seen as “chaste” to be respectable.

After years of alienation and loneliness, she re-enters a teachers college, obtains a teaching position, and finds a sense of self-worth and agency by leaving Alva. Through Emma Lou and her experiences, Thurman depicts a complex, often contradictory Black protagonist, the kind of character he argued for so passionately as a public figure and in his essays. Her story lays bare The Hypocrisy of Colorism in Black Communities, depicts the inherent racism in Black beauty standards, and illustrates the difficulties that African Americans of his day faced while navigating identity formation against the backdrop of assimilationist respectability politics.