An Exploration of Generation Freedom in Bamberg County, South Carolina circa 1905-1920
📸: “Voorhees co-eds”, approximately 1905-1920, Denmark and Bamberg County, South Carolina, University of South Carolina University Libraries Digital Collections
Mirror Moment: Generational Freedom
When I first saw this archival image, only the four standing women were visible. Their crisp white dress shirts contrasted against the creeping greenery hugging the right side of the porch. The two women on the left gaze almost past the camera. Whereas the two standing women on the right turn their gaze to our left. All four standing women have at least one hand holding the garland.
It wasn’t until I scrolled down that the fifth woman became visible to me. At first glance, she appears to be squatting or sitting cross-legged in a looser ruffled dress, a string of pearls, and her arms loosely drape one another at the wrist. The squatting woman’s gazes straight up and into the camera lens as the other women hold up her garland crown.
This archival image from the HBCU Voorhees in South Carolina makes me think of Dr. Imani Perry’s (Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University) discussion of the danger of “showing all your stuff” in her book South to America. Dr. Perry’s exploration of respectability politics is a uniquely beautiful take describing how Black people “learned elegance as a way of loving” (314). And while some may say the four standing women are presumably more elegant than the sitting one, I believe she possesses the same lovely charming beauty even as her body releases in comparison to the tightening posture of the standing women. Although Dr. Perry was talking about Mobile women, these women too lived and held fast to a wayward life. Especially, the sitting woman with the garland crown.