Black Women

Portrait of a young African American woman identified as Ora Asbury. Photographed circa 1907 by Joseph J Pennell in Junction City, Kansas. Pennell Photography Collection/Kansas Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas

Portrait of a young African American woman identified as Mrs. Will Richardson. Photographed circa 1907 by Joseph J Pennell in Junction City, Kansas. Pennell Photography Collection/Kansas Collection, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas

This well dressed African American woman is Lucy Davis. She was an entrepreneur, a land owner, and a sugar beet farmer. She's also the Great Grandmother of legendary actress Pam Grier. [ Photograph was tweeted by Ms. Grier on April 20, 2016]

Maude Brooks Cotton (1872-1945), a native of Oberlin, Ohio, received her early school training at Knoxville College. Later she enrolled at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1896. In 1900 she was married to Reverend John Adam Cotton (1865 - 1943), and immediately journeyed in the mission field for the United Presbyterian Church. In 1903, she joined her husband in Henderson, North Carolina, where he was called to pastor and serve as president of the Henderson Normal School. Making him the second African American to do so. She was an active member of the organization and also wrote the words and music for the Federated Song. "We Are Lifting as We Climb." She was a charter member and local and state president of the Parent -Teachers Association. In 1943, she accompanied her husband to Knoxville College, where he was named the first black president and served until his death that same year. She was the mother of Carol C. Bowie, an educator. She is interred on the grounds of Jubilee Hospital. (Courtesy of Andre D. Vann) FYI: Some of her other interests: In 1914 she attended the Convention of the National Association of Colored Women. ( Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, By Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore ) Info: Vance County, North Carolina, By Andre Vann, (2000) Photo: Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Knoxville, Tennessee / Knaffl Brothers, Knoxville, Tennessee, (circa 1890s).

Catherine Lucas (1836 - 1874), married her second husband, Ezekiel Gillespie on March 9, 1866 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She along with her husband are buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. findagravememorial

For Black Americans, the past is ever-present. The past shapes what we believe and, for better or worse, it allows us to imagine what is possible. I have been riveted by the entire 1619 project. But I was particularly struck by what Nikole Hannah-Jones has said (and written) about having complex feelings about patriotism. This passage is from her essay in The New York Times Magazine: My dad always flew an American flag in our front yard. The blue paint on our two-story house was perennially chipping; the fence, or the rail by the stairs, or the front door, existed in a perpetual state of disrepair, but that flag always flew pristine ... that flag outside our home never made sense to me. How could this black man, having seen firsthand the way his country abused black Americans, how it refused to treat us as full citizens, proudly fly its banner? I didn’t understand his patriotism. It deeply embarrassed me. For many Black Americans, it's like an abusive relationship. We love our country, but it does not always love us back. The best way I can grapple with this complicated dynamic is by looking back at my own family. I have a picture of my grandmother, Ethel Phillips, posing with the great-granddaughter of her employer. The child is looking up at my grandmother as she smiles into the camera. They are both holding small American flags. My grandmother is wearing a light blue dress, which was actually a uniform. For nearly 59 years, my grandmother was a domestic worker. She spent 43 of those years (1955 to 1998) working for several generations of one family in Dearborn, Michigan. Her inability to escape the servitude of that family has gripped me for years, partially because her story is also incredibly common. Born in 1919, Ethel was the fifth of 16 children born in West Feliciana, Louisiana and raised in Darlove, Mississippi. She was quiet, shy and smart. Ethel was valedictorian of her 8th-grade class, but she never attended high school. When I asked her why, she always responded, “the school was too far away.” What Ethel did not know was that during the time there were only a handful of public high schools in the South that African American children could attend for a classical education. Racial discrimination, segregation and violence kept even the most enterprising black people from improving their lives in significant ways. Relocation from rural areas to urban settings or from the South to the North was all but required for those seeking better opportunities. Ethel worked on her family farm until the age of 21, and then joined her older brothers and sisters in Inkster, Michigan. In the mid-20th century, because of the booming auto manufacturing industry, Detroit held the promise of better employment, a better wage and a better life. However, for many black women, once they got there, domestic labor was the only job they could find. As of 1960, one-third of all African American women who worked were employed as household workers. It was hard work and required significant time away from one’s own family. There were no unemployment benefits, worker’s compensation, pensions or social security. During the Great Depression, southern Democrats blocked legislation that would enable black Americans to receive federal benefits and protections. Sharecroppers and domestic workers — the majority of them African American — were exempt. Scholars have estimated that close to 70% of black laborers were not working in sectors that would have included them under FDR’s National Recovery Administration. Accordingly, my grandmother worked for years into old age because she could not afford to retire. But, ask anyone in her employer’s family and they will tell you that they adored Ethel. One told me, “She didn’t work for us, she was a member of the family.” This word, “family,” has always troubled me. Everything about Ethel’s labor reflected racial and economic subordination. Practically everywhere she went, Ethel was known as “Mrs. Phillips.” But to her employers and their children, she was just, “Ethel.” The etiquette of formal address was never extended to domestic servants. Even after her death, members of the family asked me, “What was her last name?” When Ethel arrived for work, she entered through the garage door. The front door was reserved for guests or real “family.” Throughout all her years of cleaning, Ethel never used a mop. She contended the only way to clean a floor was on your hands and knees. As a fair-skinned African American woman, washing the floors in this manner caused her knees to temporarily turn black with calluses. While the floors were spotless, the stains of servitude were unmistakable on Ethel’s knees. After her funeral, another family member wrote me a letter. He told me he kept a picture of my grandmother inside his laundry cabinet. He wrote, “It would be a late night…[and] I would be doing laundry and [I] would be so tired.” Then he would see the picture of Ethel taped to the inside of his cabinet and “know that every time I reached for the Tide detergent that I knew that I could do it all, too!” The imagery of his recollection also suggests that he could not separate Ethel’s work or personhood from a commodity. For him, my grandmother was a proverbial “Mrs. Clean,” who came to life and befriended him during childhood. In the same way that many Americans conjure up warm or nostalgic feelings for products advertised with black bodies such as Aunt Jemima’s Syrup or Uncle Ben’s Rice. Black humanity is rendered as flat as the packaging. When my grandmother finally stopped working, she was 79. Her story is not unique. In fact, it is representative of many marginalized Americans and undocumented workers today. It explains why cultivating generational wealth was — and is — so crucially important. While all of my grandmother’s descendants are educated, education is not wealth. In some ways, higher education is debt. This kind of structural inequality prevents retirement, promotes subordination and offers no protection. I wish my grandmother was the exception, but she remains the rule. Her life taught me that “good bosses” aren’t just kind. Good bosses provide safeguards, opportunity and dignity. The 1619 project reminds me that African American progress both individually and collectively can feel unobtainable in the face of discriminatory legislation, racist policies and exploitative practices. And so, for some of us, waving a flag can feel dishonest. That said, I am also reminded that it is Black Americans who continually fight to overturn these injustices. When I think of what has been accomplished from my grandmother, to my mother, to me, waving the flag can also feel like hope. Sources: wbur.org/cognoscenti; 'Just Ethel': What My Grandmother, Who Was Much More Than A Domestic Worker, Taught Me About Black Patriotism (Oct. 30, 2019); Kellie Carter Jackson is the Knafel Assistant Professor of the Humanities in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She is the author of "Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence."

This unidentified woman posed for a studio portrait in the 1930s. Locale and photographer, unknown. 'The Face of Our Past: Images of Black Women from Colonial America to the Present' edited by Kathleen Thompson and Hilary Mac Austin

I believe these two young ladies (names unknown) were possibly entertainers in on the vaudeville stage. NYPL

A very beautiful 1870 hand colored tintype of an unknown African American woman. Legacy: Treasures of Black History; Edited by Thomas C Battle and Donna M Wells, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center

Miss Powell was in the Class of 1910 at Eastern Illinois State Normal School. The school was founded in 1895 as Eastern Illinois State Normal School and became a state teacher’s college in 1921. Renamed Eastern Illinois State College in 1947, it was elevated to university status in 1957. Photographic Images and the History of African Americans in Coles County, Illinois, Onaiwu W. Ogbomo, Director, African American Studies & Exhibition Curator

This appears to be an occupational photograph of a beautiful African American woman standing beside what appears to be a medical bag. Occupational photographs were popular in the 19th and early 20th century. Photo comes from the book Saga of the Black Woman by Rosetta Lucas Quisenberry

Tintype of Gertrude A. Watson Goodridge (1861 - 1948), wife of famed black photographer, William O. Goodridge. The couple had three children. She's buried in the Goodridge Cemetery plot in Forest Lawn. She became a widow at the young age of twenty-eight when her husband died in an accident leaving her with three young children; their daughter was born after his death. The Goodridge Brothers included Glenalvin (1829-1867), Wallace (1840-1922), and William (1846-1890), were among the first African American photographers to operate professionally in the nation. Begun by eldest brother Glenalvin Goodridge in York, Pennsylvania in 1847 and continued by his younger brothers, Wallace and William in Saginaw, Michigan between 1864 and 1922. Businesses were difficult to start and maintain in nineteenth century Michigan, especially if you were black. No matter the barriers, William and Wallace Goodridge thrived under the pressure and created the state’s first minority owned photography business. The Goodridge Brothers Photography Studio was internationally renowned for its progressive use of photographic technologies, the variety of its subjects, and the skillful implementation of photographic techniques. John V. Jezierski, "Enterprising Images: The Goodridge Brothers," African American Photographers 1847-1922

A circa 1940s portrait of a woman identified as Lois Harris. Addison N Scurlock, Photographer, Washington DC

Lovely portrait of a young woman identified as Georgia Morse photographed at A.T. Durant Studio in Akron, Ohio.

Portrait of an unknown African American young woman. [ The Saga of the Black Woman; by Rosetta Lucas Quisenberry ]

Maude Brooks Cotton (1872-1945), a native of Oberlin, Ohio, received her early school training at Knoxville College. Later she enrolled at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1896. In 1900 she was married to Reverend John Adam Cotton (1865 - 1943), and immediately journeyed in the mission field for the United Presbyterian Church. In 1903, she joined her husband in Henderson, North Carolina, where he was called to pastor and serve as president of the Henderson Normal School. Making him the second African American to do so. She was an active member of the organization and also wrote the words and music for the Federated Song. "We Are Lifting as We Climb." She was a charter member and local and state president of the Parent -Teachers Association. In 1943, she accompanied her husband to Knoxville College, where he was named the first black president and served until his death that same year. She was the mother of Carol C. Bowie, an educator. She is interred on the grounds of Jubilee Hospital. Sources: Vance County, North Carolina, By Andre Vann, (2000); Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Knoxville, Tennessee; Knaffl Brothers, Knoxville, Tennessee;Courtesy of Andre D. Vann

Portrait of Lille Belle Armstrong wife of famed magician J Hartford Armstrong. She was also a part of the act. When her husband died, she along with her stepdaughter Ellen continued his tradition, performing magic for the African-American community. [ South Carolina Digital Archives/University of SC/Armstrong Family Papers ]

An unknown beauty with an amazing necklace. [ Ontario Historical Society ]