I don’t remember the first time I watched the 1985 version of The Color Purple, but I remember one scene that made me feel like I was sitting right by the characters. Singer Shug Avery croons a beautiful blues song to Celie, the story’s main character, in a juke joint. Celie has her head down despite the lively atmosphere, sullen, thanks to a life of pain and loss. Shug sings about knowing Celie’s troubles, about seeing her and wanting her to know that she’s loved and worth singing about, even if the world outside of the juke joint walls doesn’t make her think so. The hot and sweaty space, a shanty made of wood pieces and tin, holds a crowd of locals swaying drunkenly to the music, sipping strong drinks, and dancing despite the temperature. The whole scene illustrates a large part of what juke joints have always offered for many communities of Black folks in the American South.
At their heart, juke joints are more informal bars, where food and liquor are cheap, the hours are late, and the vibes are all about Black culture. The smell of cigarette smoke and fryer oil hang in the air and cling to weathered vinyl seats like raindrops on a window, evidence of years and years of clientele using the space. Here the sounds of Bobby Womack, B.B. King, or Chuck Berry play from a jukebox while a bartender pours liquor into a plastic cup or rocks glass with abandon. Speaking to a specific, rural, and Southern slice of Black American culture, the juke joint offers a world of escapism in a dark room.
Historically, they are often portrayed as dirty, dingy, and sometimes dangerous spaces: In the photographer Marion Post Wolcott’s famous photos, Black folks are dancing and gambling in makeshift buildings; even in The Color Purple, the night at the juke joint ends when a fight breaks out between a woman and her husband’s mistress. These images are part of a long narrative throughout American history that African American drinking culture is “derelict,” according to author and editor in chief of Cook’s Country magazine, Toni Tipton-Martin. In her new book Juke Joints, Jazz Clubs & Juice, which chronicles Black contributions to mixology throughout American history, she explains that the word juke, or jook, is believed to be rooted in the West African word juga, meaning “bad” or “wicked,” or the Gullah word juk, which means “infamous and disorderly.”
But buying into this narrative means you miss the full picture, Tipton-Martin tells me. “Is it possible that these places can be more than just a place where Black folks are out of control?” she asked when she started the book project. Her book’s release is part of a renewed wave of attention on juke joints and their legacy. In a new musical film adaptation of The Color Purple, which was released last year, the juke joint scene is Broadway-esque and more grandiose than the original. For Tipton-Martin, these informal clubs are part of a long history of Black innovation for ourselves and our communities, from enslavement to present day. “My work is about reclamation, resistance that defines our creativity, and ingenuity,” she says. “It always comes back to the way people of color have had to figure it out for ourselves.”
