On registration day, Emma Lou rushed out to the campus of the University of Southern California one hour before the registrar’s office was scheduled to open. She spent the time roaming around, familiarizing herself with the layout of the campus and learning the names of the various buildings, some old and vineclad, others new and shiny in the sun, and watching the crowds of laughing students, rushing to and fro, greeting one another and talking over their plans for the coming school year. But her main reason for such an early arrival on the campus had been to find some of her fellow Negro students. She had heard that there were to be quite a number enrolled, but in all her hour’s stroll she saw not one, and finally somewhat disheartened she got into the line stretched out in front of the registrar’s office, and, for the moment, became engrossed in becoming a college freshman.
All the while, though, she kept searching for a colored face, but it was not until she had been duly signed up as a student and sent in search of her advisor that she saw one. Then three colored girls had sauntered into the room where she was having a conference with her advisor, sauntered in, arms interlocked, greeted her advisor, then sauntered out again. Emma Lou had wanted to rush after them—to introduce herself, but of course it had been impossible under the circumstances. She had immediately taken a liking to all three, each of whom was what is known in the parlance of the black belt as high brown, with modishly-shingled bobbed hair and well formed bodies, fashionably attired in flashy sport garments. From then on Emma Lou paid little attention to the business of choosing subjects and class hours, so little attention in fact that the advisor thought her exceptionally tractable and somewhat dumb. But she liked students to come that way. It made the task of being advisor easy. One just made out the program to suit oneself, and had no tedious explanations to make as to why the student could not have such and such a subject at such and such an hour, and why such and such a professor’s class was already full.
After her program had been made out, Emma Lou was directed to the bursar’s office to pay her fees. While going down the stairs she almost bumped into two dark-brown-skinned boys, obviously brothers if not twins, arguing as to where they should go next. One insisted that they should go back to the registrar’s office. The other was being equally insistent that they should go to the gymnasium and make an appointment for their required physical examination. Emma Lou boldly stopped when she saw them, hoping they would speak, but they merely glanced up at her and continued their argument, bringing cards and pamphlets out of their pockets for reference and guidance. Emma Lou wanted to introduce herself to them, but she was too bashful to do so. She wasn’t yet used to going to school with other Negro students, and she wasn’t exactly certain how one went about becoming acquainted. But she finally decided that she had better let the advances come from the others, especially if they were men. There was nothing forward about her, and since she was a stranger it was no more than right that the old-timers should make her welcome. Still, if these had been girls … , but they weren’t, so she continued her way down the stairs.
In the bursar’s office, she was somewhat overjoyed at first to find that she had fallen into line behind another colored girl who turned around immediately, and, after saying hello, announced in a loud, harsh voice:
“My feet are sure some tired!”
Emma Lou was so taken aback that she couldn’t answer. People in college didn’t talk that way. But meanwhile the girl was continuing:
“Ain’t this registration a mess?”
Two white girls who had fallen into line behind Emma Lou snickered. Emma Lou answered by shaking her head. The girl continued:
“I’ve been standin’ in line and climbin’ stairs and talkin’ and a-signin’ till I’m just ’bout done for.”
“It is tiresome,” Emma Lou returned softly, hoping the girl would take a hint and lower her own strident voice. But she didn’t.
“Tiresome ain’t no name for it,” she declared more loudly than ever before, then, “Is you a new student?”
“I am,” answered Emma Lou, putting much emphasis on the “I am.”
She wanted the white people who were listening to know that she knew her grammar if this other person didn’t. “Is you,” indeed! If this girl was a specimen of the Negro students with whom she was to associate, she most certainly did not want to meet another one. But it couldn’t be possible that all of them—those three girls and those two boys for instance—were like this girl. Emma Lou was unable to imagine how such a person had ever gotten out of high school. Where on earth could she have gone to high school? Surely not in the North. Then she must be a southerner. That’s what she was, a southerner—Emma Lou curled her lips a little—no wonder the colored people in Boise spoke as they did about southern Negroes and wished that they would stay South. Imagine anyone preparing to enter college saying “Is you,” and, to make it worse, right before all these white people, these staring white people, so eager and ready to laugh. Emma Lou’s face burned.
“Two mo’, then I goes in my sock.”
Emma Lou was almost at the place where she was ready to take even this statement literally, and was on the verge of leaving the line. Supposing this creature did “go in her sock!” God forbid!
“Wonder where all the spades keep themselves? I ain’t seen but two ’sides you.”
“I really do not know,” Emma Lou returned precisely and chillily. She had no intentions of becoming friendly with this sort of person. Why she would be ashamed even to be seen
