The Will to Adorn: Black Women and Sartorial Choice After Enslavement

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2025 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This presentation will journey readers through the post-emancipation era by highlighting the very belongings  African American women and girls wore as they navigated the racialized landscape of the American South from the twilight of the antebellum era to the dusk of Reconstruction. What would it mean to shift the lens through which we explored the post-emancipation era to center on the lives of Black women who, formally enslaved, racialized as Black, and gendered as women, lived during the periods of momentous social transformation between the Civil War, Emancipation, and the unraveling promises of Reconstruction? Centering our attention on the understudied ways Black women during these times dressed and adorned themselves, in this presentation, I will argue that everyday objects associated with clothing, adornment, clothing maintenance, and body grooming practices were key to how Black women and girls navigated the precarity of their lives after enslavement.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2025

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow