Black and blue, Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, Little Girl Blue, The Bluest Eye, A Patch of Blue—these are just a sampling of the expressions, books, song titles, and films that made up the soundtrack of Black lives in America. In Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, author Imani Perry explains how the color blue not only gave comfort and motivation to enslaved people but also continues to mean so much to so many.
Early in the book, Perry describes the term "blue-black," a description of a skin tone that is dipped in a shade of black that is so stark that the skin appears to have a blue cast. From there, she tells a story of the color blue and what it means to those of African heritage. In 240 pages, the chapters explore how blue was woven into history. These chapters tell of leaving Africa on slave ships bound for America and those that landed in the exotic islands of Antigua, Montserrat, Saint-Dominque, and Haiti. There's a look at The Louisiana Purchase. How it brought French and African blood together, the symbolism in the color of the blue jay with its black plumage around its neck, the outrageous folklore created by believing black gums were poisonous, that hoodoo conjures made of bluestone and quinine could protect or save you, and really, so much more.
The author also shows how blue found its way into business and industry through dyeing material indigo blue (a very sought after and popular color) for suit and dressmaking. The Wedgewood pots and pans, bowls, trays, and even cameos created by 17th-century ceramicist (and abolitionist) Josiah Wedgewood often depicted the image of an enslaved man in some form of submissive behavior. The upper and middle classes, whose lives had been enriched by using slave labor, often bought the wares, perhaps unaware.
In delving very deep into historical records, Perry is able to entertain the reader by finding so many of those little-known facts that connect in surprising ways. For example, Wedgewood had a Black competitor who also created cookware on the east side of New York named Thomas Commeraw. Commeraw, although born enslaved, was later emancipated. His creations did good business even then, and in modern times, Commeraw pieces are rare and expensive finds. The (then) plantation he lived on near the East River was called Corlears Hook, as mentioned in Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
Lush blue-ish purple flowers called periwinkles grow vividly in the South. At a time when enslaved or newly free people could not begin to think of headstones to identify their loved ones, this flower was planted over the graves.
New information on Black icons, Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, personalizes them in ways that history books do not. Washington was not and could not be considered a progressive. According to Perry, he ascribed to the separate world's idea of we-will-educate-our-own-and-give-them-a-way-to-prosper-within-the-sphere-of-limited-civil-and political rights. This belief put him in opposition to W.E.B. Du Bois and other leaders of the time. Carver studied at Tuskegee and seemingly used the talent he was born with to create many foods and goods from the peanut. He studied science and soil, and learned to make "soups, fudge, soaps, lotions, laxatives and liniments from peanuts, sweet potatoes and pecans." He mixed fruits and vegetables with peanuts to make various paint colors. He is described as loving creativity, fine clothing, crocheting, and embroidery. He liked eating peanuts with chocolate for breakfast.
Overall, each of Perry's chapters reads like lengthy prose with facts. There are times when it seems she is veering a little off subject, but each chapter is a story with a beginning, middle, and end. The real-life characters tend to move each chapter along, but there's plenty of period history to sample. Whether it's the time of Washington and Carver, 19th and 20th-century New York, or the cotton and tobacco fields of the South, France, Florida, the Congo, or Cape Verde, Black In Blues has a story to tell.