In her book, "Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People", scholar Imani Perry delves into the significance of the color blue in Black culture. She posits that blue embodies both hope and melancholy, serving as a profound symbol threaded throughout Black history. Notably, Perry connects the color to Coretta Scott King's wedding dress and Fannie Lou Hamer’s Congressional testimony, emphasizing its elegance and power. Additionally, she reflects on blue's historical ties to indigo trading and the experiences of enslaved people during the middle passage, suggesting it represents a longing for freedom and return.
"There was something about the universality of the color blue and ... the way in which those two senses of blue coincided so profoundly that actually, for me, became a pathway to thinking about Blackness."
"When I see the repetition of the blue, and particularly the repetition among Black women of the South, I think of it as a color that certainly had a kind of grace and elegance... it's a color that's associated with power, culturally speaking."
"I fail but try to grasp what it was to be snatched from everything you knew... to then look to the sky and the water and think, maybe there's maybe that's a path to return."
"It's the in-between. It's the slurred note ... that which isn't recognized on the Western scale ... the addition of the blue note..."
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