The Journal of African American History
Review by Dr. Robert Hawkins
“This collection of writings by journalist Bill Minutaglio, In Search of the Blues: A Journey to the Soul of Black Texas, includes thirty years of reporting on African American life and culture. More than a series on music as the title implies, Minutaglio’s essays invoke “the blues” as a concept to explore race, poverty, social injustice, and the challenges facing a white writer attempting to capture the experiences of his African American subjects. The result is an anthology that probes the daily realities for black Texans and refuses to shy away from inquiries about how people live with historic injustices.
In Search of the Blues transcends the formula for collections on Blues music. Rather than mere profiles of musicians, the volume covers the range of Minutaglio’s experiences investigating African American issues for reluctant newspaper publishers in Texas. Though his chapters include “Blues” in their titles, the first hundred pages do not deal with music—and this is a good thing. Organized into sections entitled “Three Generations,” “Community,” and “The Music,” Minutaglio’s essays demand that readers enamored with black music become familiar with the communities from which it sprang and gain some understanding of “the blues” that extends beyond the musical form.
Following an introduction, the collection begins with “Hanging Tree Blues.” With no mention of music, the essay recalibrates readers’ expectations by exploring football coach Ray Rhodes’s roots in Mexia, Texas. Minutaglio pairs the story of Rhodes integrating the local high school, which prompted the burning of a cross in the family’s yard, with his own investigation of the lynching of one of Rhodes’s relatives years before at the “hanging tree” outside town. In Minutaglio’s hands, the tree embodies the adversity Rhodes faced and grounds the coach’s reputation for toughness in the town’s racial history, hinting at a past that lingers in the character of those who lived it. This theme persists as Minutaglio introduces readers to two other black Texans, former Black Panther Fahim Minkah, and Percy Sutton, the San Antonio native who became proprietor of the Apollo Theater and a leading politician in Harlem. Taken together, the essays reveal the blues as an ethos of struggle, survival, and bearing up against almost insurmountable odds.
While the first section of In Search of the Blues is strong, it is surpassed by the second. Mapping the forgotten human geographies of Dallas, Texas, Minutaglio is at his best in these observations. Focusing on the neighborhood of Joppa, founded after emancipation, he describes the unemployed workers who wait for day labor, uncovering places city leaders have overlooked, neglected, or sought to eradicate. Joppa is cut off from emergency services by railroad tracks and under pressure of gentrification by an adjacent country club whose leaders view the neighborhood as blighted. Similarly, in the town of Sand Branch, Texas, he encounters families scraping by without potable water or sewer service, despite living near a wastewater treatment facility. Minutaglio reports that one Sand Branch resident feels the town is treated “as if no one really lived there” and indeed, Minutaglio’s writing communicates the seeming unreality that confronts visitors. Isolated, marginalized, and lacking opportunities, these neighborhoods appear outside of time, as though the author is “standing on a block built inside a bottle” while the chairs dotting front porches are “seats on a train that doesn’t move.” The world has passed these communities by; Minutaglio’s essays seek to draw them back into its embrace or, at least, to call them to its attention—despite his persistent doubts about his right to do so.
The self-serving motivations of some white observers of the black poor are familiar, and in the hands of a less introspective writer, In Search of the Blues might have descended into paternalistic machismo. However, Minutaglio generally manages to avoid these pitfalls. Rather than making any claims to “objectivity,” he interrogates himself and his ability to portray honestly the lives of his respondents. He is forthcoming in his introduction, particularly about how his family’s racial fears shaped his own as he entered neighborhoods where a life’s worth of socialization told him he should not be. This transparency serves him well as he struggles to investigate African American communities without engaging in “urban colonialism.” Frequently mistaken for a policeman by residents unaccustomed to attention from unknown whites, Minutaglio grapples with the limited possibility of transcending racial history. After learning about the castration of a black man in 1941 that became part of the community’s memory, he confronts his own connection to that past: “You are the history,” he tells himself. “No one invited you. And off you go to South Dallas in search of the blues, as if they were yours . . . as if you didn’t help give people the blues.” Minutaglio’s investigation of black Texas is clearly also his own quest to face the legacies of racial injustice. Consequently, by the time he addresses music he has more credibility than the average white blues enthusiast.
Minutaglio’s chapters on music, ranging from T-Bone Walker to Zydeco, fall short of the intensity of the earlier sections, though they will interest any lover of Blues music. The writing is strong and evocative; indeed, the description of his relationship with a photograph of the pianist Alex Moore is extremely compelling; however, at times Minutaglio the fan seems to be fighting Minutaglio the social observer for the pen. However, if enthusiasm over the discovery of guitarist Henry Qualls makes him less reflective on the issues of racial authenticity that color the musician’s marketing (his CDs read “Hotter Than a Pot of Neckbones”), such oversights are small. Indeed, Minutaglio himself expresses unease over feeling that Qualls has been conjured up by “central casting.” Rather here, as elsewhere, he is candid, sympathetic, and usually insightful. In Search of the Blues is a worthy collection by an accomplished writer. Though unlikely to become essential reading for historians, it is a powerful example of the effort to face history, reveal its lingering divides, and seek a way forward.”
—Dr. Robert Hawkins, Bradley University, Director of African American Studies, The Journal of African American History
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