Emma Lou was a young girl who came to California to go to
college at the University of Southern California from her hometown of Boise Idaho.
“..in the colored social circles of Los Angeles, Emma Lou was certain that she
would find many suitable companions, intelligent, broad-mined 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.” pg 438 This quote
describes how Emma Lou felt about wanting to meet others that had the same skin
color has her own but they also needed to be from a higher class, which she
felt they would have because of attending the same college as her. Finding
others that were the same colored face as her was difficult.
Emma Lou ended up meeting two girls, Hazel Mason and Grace
Giles. Hazel from Texas, her father became wealthy due to oil being found on
his land. Hazel was not the type of person, Emma Lou wanted to be around, she
was not pretty, was loud and embarrassing, she even tried to leave her but they
ended up as friends. Grace was also a student at the school, but was not on
campus often, because her classes were located off of campus. These three girls
were not popular and not invited to campus events or parties, they mainly stayed
with each other off campus.
“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.” pg 442 This selection from the story tells me that Emma Lou really went
to college to look for colored campus mates and the education was not her main
focus, she was good at it, but it did not make her happy.
After Emma Lou’s first year of college she returned home for
the summer, discouraged and depressed, her college experience was not what she
wanted it to be. “There was no place in the world for a dark girl.” pg 446 Emma
Lou could not escape the challenge of being born a dark skinned girl.
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