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This document does not meet current format guidelines Graduate School at the The University of Texas at Austin. of the It has been published for informational use only.

Copyright by

Ayana Aisha Flewellen 2018

The Dissertation Committee for Ayana Aisha Flewellen Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Dissertation:

The Clothes on Her Back: Interpreting Sartorial Practices of Self- Making at the Levi Jordan Plantation

Committee:

Maria Franklin, Supervisor

Edmund Gordon

Enrique Rodríguez

James Denbow

Whitney Battle-Baptiste

The Clothes on Her Back: Interpreting Sartorial Practices of Self- Making at the Levi Jordan Plantation

by

Ayana Aisha Flewellen

Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin May 2018 Dedication

To the late Susan Shaw, who birthed Silvia Russell, who birthed Lydia Lilly Russell, who birthed Susie Ella Armstead, who birthed my great-grandmother, Dovie Lee Tyler. To these ancestral mothers, who labored in the cotton fields and as domestic servants in Falls County, Texas, while fashioning themselves lives worth living.

Acknowledgements

It felt a little surreal to write this section. After ten years in college - six of which were spent in graduate school - it is wild to think that this chapter of my life is now coming to close. I am in the process of preparing for the afterlife of graduate school. I am beyond appreciative of Maria Franklin and Whitney Battle-Baptiste for being unapologetic Black women in the field of archaeology. Their scholarship makes my work and the work of my peers possible. I am also eternally grateful for Edmund Gordon, who came to my defense with all 250 pages of my dissertation printed with notes in the margins. Additionally, I am thankful for Enrique Rodríguez Alegría, who spent hours of his time providing detailed feedback for each chapter I wrote. Finally, I want to thank James Denbow, whose insightful commentary on my defense will help strengthen this work as it shifts and transforms in the future.

I want to thank my mother, Dr. Rona Carter. I am possible because of her. I witnessed my mother make her way through higher education as an adolescent. Watching her allowed me to see how she carved a path for herself within academia. There was never a doubt in my mind or hers that I would go to college, and pursue graduate school. It was because of my mother that I knew finishing graduate school was a possibility. My mother is my light, my guide, and I am forever grateful for her labor. Thank you for being a lighthouse Mommie.

I give thanks to my ancestors, those I can name and those who I cannot. The completion of this work is made possible by my egun who dreamed me into being and whispered their stories to me in the wind. I gift this work to my descendants, who I hope will read this text and feel their existence rooted in the hands of women who picked cotton v in the fields of Falls County, Texas, who cooked meals in cast iron pots to nourish their spirit and body, and who ran their fingers through the kink and curls of children's hair humming hymns of "the ol'days" and "this too shall pass." I give thanks to my Austin and New Orleans community who held me with love and compassion. I am thankful for my cousin, Bryana Tillman. She put up with me as a roommate who always left our kitchen cabinets open and my books scattered in the living room. I am in gratitude to my aunties Denise Carter, Michelle Carter, and Nicole Carter, who sent words of encouragement over the years. I am thankful for Sally-Mae Wilborn Carter and Kathy Murry Flewellen "Bibi," my maternal and paternal grandmothers, who remind me of the fire and water that runs through my blood. To my tribe, Nija White, Wanjira Murimi, Alisa Valentin, Alicia Odewale, Justin Dunnavant, Soraya Jean-Louis, and my love, Spirit, I am grateful to call you all my chosen family, and I give thanks to all of you for making the last six years possible. I also would like to thank Dr. Kenneth Brown for his years of work at the Levi

Jordan Plantation, and Carol McDavid for her commitment to community-engaged archaeology, particularly her work with descendant communities at the Levi Jordan Plantation. Additionally, I am grateful for the Texas Historical Commission, especially

Laura DeNormandie and Jessica Robkin, who provided me access to the Levi Jordan Plantation artifact assemblage and brought me soy lattes and miniature delicious fruit pies. Finally, I acknowledge that this work was conjured within a community of "Black feminist metaphysicians," to pull from Alexis Pauline Gumbs, who are envisioning worlds of possibility within and outside of academia where black women and our production of knowledge are valued and treasured.

vi Abstract

The Clothes on Her Back: Interpreting Sartorial Practices of Self- Making at the Levi Jordan Plantation

Ayana Aisha Flewellen, Ph.D.

The University of Texas at Austin, 2018

Supervisor: Maria Franklin

In the midst of social reform and the rise of mass produced goods that defined the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black women were pinning their hair up with combs, lacing glass beads around their necks, dyeing coarse-cotton fabric with sumac berries and walnuts, and fastening buttons to adorn their bodies and dress their social lives. This project addresses one central question: How did race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression shape African American women’s identity formation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Texas? This project addresses this question using archaeological and documentary evidence, by investigating why and how African American women engaged in particular practices of dress and adornment in Texas from 1865 to 1910. I focus my research on the clothing, adornment, and grooming artifacts recovered from the Levi

Jordan Plantation (LJP), where African American families lived and labored as tenants, wage laborers, and sharecroppers. Under the umbrella of my central question, I ask:

vii 1. In what ways were sartorial practices embedded in relations and ideologies of race,

gender, and class, and how did Black women negotiate these operations of power and oppression through dress? 2. Given the relationship between fashion and the construction of hegemonic notions

of femininity, are Black women’s clothing and adornment practices representative of resistance and/or conformity to these notions? Is there evidence of formations of a distinctive Black womanhood?

3. As African American women moved through various spaces (at home, at work, and in public spaces) during a time of heightened racial oppression, how were their choices regarding dress influenced? In what ways were their sartorial practices situational to the spaces they occupied?

Through a Black feminist intersectional lens, I attempt to answer these questions by interpreting the ways practices of dress engaged in by African Americans at the LJP were shaped by race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression, within spheres of labor at home and beyond. This work examines how these operations of power and oppression shaped and were shaped by constructions of Black womanhood - as seen through sartorial practices – within spheres of labor, as well as through the threat of racialized and gendered violence, the desire for self-expression, and processes of social reproduction.

viii Table of Contents

List of Tables ...... xii

List of Figures ...... xiv

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Research Objectives ...... 1

Theoretical Framework: Black Feminist Theory and Intersectional Research ...... 8

Previous Related Research: Feminist Archaeology and Critical Race Theory Archaeology ...... 11

Overview of Terminology ...... 18

Overview of Dissertation Chapters ...... 19

Chapter 2: Locating African American Women in the Past and Situating their Dress Practices ...... 20

Locating African American women in U.S. History ...... 21

“Mules and Men:” Black Women’s Labor in Texas ...... 28

“How It Feels To Be Colored Me:” Market Accessibility and the Rise of Mass Produced Goods in Texas ...... 36

“The Will to Adorn:” Contextualizing African American Dress Practices ...... 41

Conclusion ...... 45

Chapter 3: Levi Jordan Plantation and Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead Project Excavations and Results ...... 47

Archaeological Work Conducted at the Levi Jordan Plantation From 1986 To Present ...... 47

Kenneth Brown and the University of Houston Excavations ...... 51

Existing Scholarship on the LJP Site ...... 56

Future Plans for the LJP...... 57

Archaeological Excavations and Results from Levi Jordan Plantation ...... 57 ix Current Analysis of LJP Artifacts ...... 60

Artifacts Recovered from The Levi Jordan Plantation Cabins ...... 65

The Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead Project ...... 70

Remarks ...... 75

Chapter 4: Clothing and Adornment Artifacts ...... 76

Clothing Fasteners From LJP ...... 79

Hook-and-Eye Closures ...... 102

Jewelry ...... 105

Hair Combs and Hair Pins at the LJP ...... 119

Clothing and Adornment Data from the LJP Cabins and the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead ...... 123

Conclusion ...... 132

Chapter 5: The Clothes on Her Back: Interpreting Sartorial Practices of Self-Making at the Levi Jordan Plantation...... 134

Dress and Labor ...... 140

Dress and Violence ...... 146

Dress and Self-Expression ...... 152

Dress and Social Reproduction ...... 162

Conclusion ...... 170

Chapter 6: Conclusion...... 171

Sartorial Practices and Conceptualizations of Resistance and Conformity ...... 173

Sartorial Practices as Situational...... 174

The Significance of The Study ...... 175

x Appendix ...... 177

Works Cited ...... 181

Vita ...... 205

xi List of Tables

Table 2.1 The table outlines agricultural and homemaking/domestic tasks requiring the labor of African American women at the Levi Jordan Plantation. Based on tasks outlined in Sharpless 1999: 160; Jones 2010; Fox-

Genovese 1988...... 32 Table 3.1 TPQs of artifacts used to determine date range of LJP cabins ...... 64 Table 3.2 Count of Units per cabin excavated at the LJP Quarters and used for analysis...... 66

Table 3.3 Total Number of Artifacts by Material, LJP Quarters ...... 68 Table 3.4 Profile of cabin I-A-2 in LJP Quarters by functional classification ...... 69 Table 3.5 Functional Classification Categories for RSWF. Reproduced from Lee

2014...... 74 Table 4.1 Artefactual data recovered from within the architectural bounds of the seven LJP cabins used for this project ...... 78

Table 4.2 All clothing fasteners recovered from the LJP Quarters used in this project ...... 82 Table 4.3 Total number of buttons unearthed from seven cabins at LJP by material

type ...... 85

Table 4.4 Table outlining button measurements and corresponding size classifications as they relate to clothing type. Peacock (1973);

(Lindbergh 1999); (Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1896) ...... 96

Table 4.5 Table outlining button measurements and corresponding size classifications at the LJP ...... 97 Table 4.6 Table outlining button color by cabin at the LJP ...... 101

Table 4.7 Table outlining frequency of hook and eye fasteners by cabin at the LJP .104 xii Table 4.8 Artefactual data classified as jewelry by cabin at the LJP ...... 108

Table 4.9 Table outlining count of Bead type by cabin at the LJP ...... 116 Table 4.10 Table outlining Bead color by cabin at the LJP ...... 118 Table 4.11 Table outlining count of hair comb and hairpin data recovered at LJP by

cabin ...... 122 Table 4.12 Total Number of Artefactual data recovered from seven LJP Cabins and the RSWF ...... 124

Table 4.13 Clothing fasteners recovered at the LJP and the RSWF...... 126 Table 4.14 Count of buttons recovered from the LJP by material type ...... 128 Table 4.15 Count of buttons recovered from the RSWF by material type ...... 129 Table 4.16 Total count of Buttons by color at the RSWF...... 130

Table 4.17 Combs and hairpin Artefactual data recovered from seven cabins at the LJP and the RSWF ...... 131 Table 4.18 Jewelry artefactual data recovered from the LJP and the RSWF ...... 132 Table 5.1. Table outlines total count of decorated and undecorated buttons recovered

at the LJP...... 149 Table 5.2 Table outlines the total bead color count at the seven cabins analyzed at

the LJP...... 155 Table 5.3. Table outlines the total button color count at the seven cabins analyzed at

the LJP...... 156

Table 5.4 Table outlines bead shape count total data at the LJP...... 158

Table 5.5. Table outlines bead shape by cabin at the LJP...... 159

xiii List of Figures

Figure 2.1 Daguerreotype of African American women with two White children. Description reads “African American nurse with two young children. In ornamental case.” Curtesy of Cornell University’s Loewentheil

Collection of African-American Photographs ...... 35 Figure 2.2 Sear, Roebuck and Co 1896 catalog advertisement for their mail order services ...... 38 2012). 49

Figure 3.1 Map of Texas with location of Levi Jordan Plantation (Kenneth Brown 2012) ...... 49 Figure 3.2 Timeline of events at the LJP...... 50

Figure 3.3 Map of Structures identified by Kenneth Brown from 1986-2006 (Kenneth Brown 2012) ...... 52 Figure 3.4 Map of excavations at Levi Jordan by Kenneth Brown from 1986-2006

(Brown 2012) ...... 55 Figure3.5 Example of 5x5 foot unit and 1x1 subunits used during Brown's excavations from 1986-2006 (Brown 2012)...... 59 63

Figure 3.6 TPQs from unites analyzed from cabin blocks 1 and 2 ...... 63 Figure 3.7 Location of the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead. Reproduced

from Boyd et al. (2015:2)...... 72

Figure 4.1 Floral Patterned Brass Suspender Buckle. Cabin II-A-1, Lot # 201717, Unit 990E/1080N, Level 8, Subunit 1 ...... 81

xiv Figure 4.2 Illustration of Button Types recovered at the LJP. A: two-hole fisheye; B: four-hole, piecrust; C: four-hole, gingham decorative; D: four-hole, calico decorative; E one-hole bone button; F Victorian Jewel, left: top view, right: profile view; G: four-hole, dish, Prosser button; H: Glass,

lampwork button with loop-shank; I: two-hole panty waist button.

Illustration created by the author...... 84 Figure 4.3 Prosser utilitarian buttons. Button type from left to right: dish, dish, tire,

pie crust. Lot 00405, Unit 1010E 1095N, Level 4...... 87 Figure 4.4 Image of General Service Union button recovered from the LJP. Lot: 06327, Unit: 925E/983N, Level 3. Image taken by author...... 89 Figure 4.5 Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1895 catalogue listing of “Pearl Shirt Buttons”

with different decorative designs...... 91 Figure 4.6 Image of two molded glass buttons with loop-shank attachments recovered from the LJP. Right: Lot 04594, Unit 1025E 1095N, Level 8.

Left: Lot 04592, Unit 1025E 1095N, Level 8. Image taken by Author ...... 92 Figure 4.7 Black molded 2-hole button unearthed at LJP. Lot 00781, Unit 1020E/ 1100N, Level 4...... 99

Figure 4.8 Red rim inkwell, 4-hole Prosser button recovered from LJP. Lot07338, Unit 920E/985 N, Level 7...... 100 Figure 4.9 Advertisement for “Hooks and Eyes” from the 1896 Sears and Roebuck

Spring Catalog ...... 103

Figure 4.10 Five pendant fragments found in enslaved cabins at LJP. Lot 17649, Unit 915E 995N, Cabin I-A-2...... 107 Figure 4.11 Listing for “Watches and Jewelry” from the 1875 Montgomery and

Wade Co. Catalog ...... 114 xv Figure 4.12 Black glass bead unearthed at LJP. Lot 07207, Unit 915E/980N Level

11...... 117 Figure 4.13 Image of rubber comb found at LJP. Lot 00774, unit 1020E/1100N, Level 4...... 120

Figure 4.14 Vulcanized rubber comb roped shaft recovered from the LJP. Lot 004505, Unit 1010E/1095N Level 4 ...... 121 Figure 5.1 Stereoscope of African American men, women, and children picking cotton. The Caption reads Cotton is King, Plantation Scene, Georgia, U.S.A. Copyright 1895 by Strohmeyer & Wyman Publishers. Curtesy of Cornell University’s Loewentheil Collection of African-American

Photographs...... 136

Figure 5.2 An early 20th century photograph of Hester Holmes, domestic servant at the Levi Jordan Plantation ...... 146 Figure 5.3 Stereoscope of African American women, and children in front of a house. The Caption reads “These are the Generations of Ham.” Copyright 1895 by Strohmeyer & Wyman Publishers. Curtesy of Cornell University’s Loewentheil Collection of African-American

Photographs...... 161 Figure 5.4 A late 19th Black-and-white Still Image of a girl picking cotton with a gingham print short gown fastened to four-hole buttons, with a white

head scarf [Girl Picking Cotton, MSS1218_B002_I018], Robert

Langmuir African American Photograph Collection, Stuart A. Rose

Manuscript Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University...... 163

xvi Figure 5.5 A late 19th century Gelatin Sliver Print of African American children in line near a fence. Courtesy of Cornell University’s Loewentheil

Collection of African-American Photographs...... 166 Figure 5.6 Sear, Roebuck and Co. Advertisement 1895 ...... 168

xvii Chapter 1: Introduction

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

In the midst of social reform and the rise of mass produced goods that defined the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Black women were pinning their hair up with combs, lacing glass beads around their necks, dyeing coarse-cotton fabric with sumac berries and walnuts, and fastening buttons to adorn their bodies and dress their social lives. This project addresses one central question: How did race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression shape African American women’s identity formation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Texas? This project addresses this question using archaeological and documentary evidence, by investigating why African American women engaged in particular practices of dress and adornment in Texas from 1865 to 1910. I focus my research on 2,758 clothing, adornment, and grooming artifacts recovered from the Levi Jordan Plantation (LJP), where African American families lived and labored as tenants, wage laborers, and sharecroppers. Under the umbrella of my central question, I ask: 1. In what ways were sartorial practices embedded in relations and ideologies of race, gender, and class, and how did Black women negotiate these operations of power

and oppression through dress? 2. Given the relationship between fashion and the construction of hegemonic notions of femininity, are Black women’s clothing and adornment practices representative

of resistance and/or conformity to these notions? Is there evidence of formations of

a distinctive Black womanhood? 3. As African American women moved through various spaces (at home, at work, and in public spaces) during a time of heightened racial oppression, how were their

1 choices regarding dress influenced? How were their choices of clothing and

adornment situational to the spaces they occupied? Through a Black feminist intersectional lens, I attempt to answer these questions by interpreting the ways practices of dress engaged in by African Americans at the LJP were shaped by race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression within spheres of labor at home and beyond. This work examines how these operations of power and oppression shaped and were shaped by constructions of Black womanhood – as seen through sartorial practices – within spheres of labor, as well as through the threat of racialized and gendered violence, the desire for self-expression, and processes of social reproduction. Relatively little archaeological work has focused specifically on African American lived experiences during the 19th and 20th centuries in Texas, with a few exceptions (Pruitt 2005; Glasrud & Pitre 2008; Winegarten 2010; ongoing work by Franklin). Although there have been historical studies centered on how African American women have constructed their identities during enslavement and during the post-emancipation era (Hosbey 2001; Jones 1985; Riley 1988; Taylor 2003), there are no archaeological projects that have conducted a gendered analysis of African American sites in Texas. Whitney Battle-Baptiste

(2012:29) writes: "When addressing the lives of African descendant people, a gendered approach can mean capturing often neglected details and ignored elements of women, men, and children of the past." By this, she means that a Black feminist critical lens allows for innovative methodological and theoretical approaches within archaeological investigations that can capture the multiplicity of African American experiences. Through an application of Black feminist theory, scholars center the intersections of race, gender, and class to illuminate complexities within constructions of African American identities in the past.

2 Scholars have noted that African American women’s dress practices during the post-emancipation era acted as a testament to their harsh economic situations, centering on notions of material scarcity and a lack of resources (Jones 1985:25). Other scholars romanticize Black women’s experiences, centering resistance to hegemonic ideologies of womanhood and femininity as a principal factor in Black women's choice of dress (Camp 2002: 7). Archaeological research at sites of African enslavement (Brown 1994; Russell 1997; Singleton 2015) and post-emancipation African American sites (Bullen and Bullen

1945:17-28; Mullins 2001; Barnes 2011) challenge narratives of material scarcity with the unearthing of rich collections of material culture. The creation of representations of late 19th and 20th-century Black women through a framework that centers dress practices as acts of resistance challenges portrayals of material scarcity and economic victimhood that leave no room for the agency of African American women under the omnipotent structural oppression of capitalism. However, such notions of resistance usurp discussions regarding intersecting axes of power and oppression that shape Black life by reifying rigid conceptualizations of resistance and assimilation (Epperson 1990; Mullins 1990: 18). My work attempts to provide a more complex analysis of these two frameworks by suggesting that Black women were neither unconditionally liberated nor pure victims within the

“matrix of domination” (Hill-Collins 2000:18) that shaped their daily lives. I argue that constructions of Black womanhood – one aspect of which was shaped by daily sartorial practices of self-making - illuminate the realities of race, gender and class oppression that Black women faced within spheres of labor in and outside the home. I conceptualize Black womanhood in this work through an intersectional framework. This work does not attempt to provide an overarching stagnant or essentializing definition of what Black womanhood is. Instead, I employ Black womanhood as a constructed identity that moves fluidly both spatially and temporally. To talk about Black womanhood is to 3 acknowledge the particularities of African American women’s subjectivities that, like other identity formations, are constructed in alignment and disjunction to hegemonic ideas of femininity. I theoretically ground my use of the term “Black womanhood” within the work of Black women scholars who define the social positionality of African American women as shaping and shaped by hegemonic notions of womanhood and femininity (Crenshaw 1991; Hill-Collins 2000, 2004). I conceptualize the complexity of African American women’s social positionality as contradictory, pulling from Toni Morrison’s account of

African American women as “contradiction itself” (Morrison 1992) and Patricia Hill- Collins’ (2000) theorization of Black women as “outsiders-within.” Both of these frameworks theorize Black woman and their production of Black womanhood as simultaneously being in alignment with and in disjuncture to hegemonic notions of womanhood reserved for White middle and upper-class woman. This theoretical framework allows for fruitful discussions of African American women’s constructions of identity, and specifically the construction of Black womanhood, as a process of self- making that “re-inscribes and debunks” (McKittrick 2006) hegemonic racial and gender ideologies that devalue blackness. This process of re-inscribing and debunking is a process of recreating and reifying a palimpsest, historically created, which situates Black women and their formations of womanhood as "contradiction itself." My use of the term “palimpsest” pulls from the work of Avery Gordon (1997), who discusses the term in her literary critique of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Gordon writes that

Morrison’s text acts as a palimpsest, creating a 20th century neo-slave narrative that

“remembers some of what the slave narrative forgot” and, as a result, Morrison’s novel acts as “a document that has been inscribed several times, where the remnants of earlier, imperfectly erased scripting is still detectable” (1997:146). With Gordon’s use of the term palimpsest in mind, I conceptualize sartorial practices as processes of self-making that “re- 4 inscribe and debunk” (McKittrick) ideologies on the body that speak to and push against histories of oppression that position Black women outside the realm of hegemonic femininity and womanhood. This process of self-making is the creation and reification of a palimpsest. The "scripting" that is "still detectable" is the histories of oppression that devalue Black women and formations of their identities. Sartorial practices are processes of identity formation that build atop histories of oppression, “inscribing several times” ideologies that speak to and push against these histories.

I use the term "palimpsest" as a means of reading African American women's bodies as a text that are layered with histories of oppression which shaped past and continue to shape present formations of identity. In this way, Black women's bodies - before they are dressed – have a history written on them that is read through the color of their flesh and the texture of their hair in society as outside the realm of hegemonic femininity and womanhood. Clothing and hair styling used to dress the Black feminine body adds another layer atop of histories of oppression written onto flesh. The act of dressing speaks to a process of layering – creating and reinforcing a palimpsest - that has the potential to counter ideologies that view African American women solely as chattel and commodities; however, it does not erase histories of oppression written on their flesh.

Beads, clothing fasteners, jewelry and combs are the tools I analyze that were used for the construction of Black womanhood by African American women who lived and labored at the Levi Jordan Plantation. The objects mentioned above, which were used to dress the bodies of these women, spoke to a process of creating and reinforcing a palimpsest that “inscribed several times” ideologies that illuminated and pushed against hegemonic notions of femininity and womanhood. Within my conceptualization of Black womanhood, the multivalent meanings behind artifacts recovered in the archaeological record that relate to dress practices are tools for the formations of identities (Fisher and Loren 2003; White 5 and Beaudry 2008; Loren 2001; Heath 1999, 2004; Galle 2004; Thomas and Thomas 2004;

Beaudry 2006; Eicher 2006). My conceptualization of processes of identity formation comes from the work of Meskell, who states that “identities are multiply constructed and revolve around a set of iterative practices that are always in process, despite their material and symbolic substrata” (2002: 281). Additionally, self-making in this text is integral to processes of identity formation. Processes of self-making are quotidian acts that, through their repetitive daily nature, constitute the body. It is through these daily practices that social memory is made and reproduced. My use of the term “self-making” comes from the work of Hodder and Cessford (2004) and Atalay and Hastorf (2006), who theorize the constitution of identity through daily practices involving the body. Hodder’s examination of social memory through architecture, along with Atalay’s examination of daily foodways, together create avenues for discussions of self-making as a process created by daily practices involving the body. In this text I use the phrase “self-making” interchangeably with “identity formation.” Identity analysis within the field provided an avenue for historical archaeologists to interpret past formations of identities (White and Beaudry 2008: 209; Voss 2008; Guy and Banim 2000) by critically examining the “small things” (White and Beaudry 2008: 213). Beads, buttons, rivets, suspenders, bodices, hairpins, brooches, shoe heels, hook-and- eyes, and grommets are some of the “small things” that make up data sets compiled in archaeological studies about adornment and dress. The subfield itself is ever growing but has its roots in historical studies of identity, gender, class/status, race, as well as social anthropology, historical photography, and costume history disciplines. Eicher and Roach- Higgins (1992) provide a definition of dress and a detailed history of dress studies within the field of social-cultural anthropology, tracing its roots from early social-evolutionist 6 theoretical frameworks, to the now more widely accepted historical contextualization of dress practices. Archaeological studies of dress and adornment follow the definition of “dress” outlined by Eicher and Roach-Higgins’s (1992) text. The authors state that the conceptualization of dress “includes the body, all direct modifications to the body itself, and all three-dimensional supplements added to it” (Eicher and Roach-Higgins 1992:13). Building off the work of Eicher and Roach-Higgins (1992) I define sartorial practices as social-cultural practices, shaped by many intersecting operations of power and oppression including race, gender, class, and age, that involve modifications of the corporal form (e.g., scarification, body piercings and hair alteration), and all three-dimensional supplements added to the body (e.g., clothing, hair combs, jewelry). Centering sartorial practices as a socio-cultural practice in this work aligns with scholars of clothing and adornment in the field (Eicher and Roach-Higgins 1992; White and Beaudry 2009; White 2008, 2005; Fisher and Loren 2003; Heath 1999; Lindbergh 1999; Loren 2001, 2010; Thomas and Thomas

2004; Voss 2008; Buren and Gensmer 2017). Throughout this text, I use the phrase "sartorial practices" interchangeably with "dress" and "dress practices." I focus on sartorial practices of self-making as an aspect of a process of identity formation in which African American women were engaged. Black feminist theory grounds my approach to addressing factors that impact sartorial practices of self-making among African American women in the past. In the section that follows, I discuss how

Black feminist theory, specifically the usefulness of intersectionality as an analytical tool, illuminates how race, gender, and class intersect in complex ways that often blur binary conceptualizations of resistance and assimilation.

7 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK: BLACK FEMINIST THEORY AND INTERSECTIONAL RESEARCH

The theoretical framework that guides this research is Kimberlé Crenshaw’s (1991) theorization of intersectionality, which locates the positionality of Black women at the intersections of race, gender and class operations of power and oppression. Intersectionality is the crux of Black feminist theory; as Patricia Hill-Collins (1990:127) writes, this theoretical framework works to treat “race, class, gender, and sexuality less as personal attributes and more as systems of domination in which individuals construct unique identities” (1990:127). Intersectional analysis illuminates axes of power and oppression that construct African American women’s past and present formations of identity. This theoretical approach aims to engender examinations of African American history that, at all times, accounts for multiple facets of identity and the way they come to shape past social lives. Patricia Hill-Collins’s work Black Feminist Thought canonizes Black feminist theory and epistemology as a valid entryway for knowledge production in academia.

However, Hill-Collins’s work is built atop a history of words from Black women, who for centuries have spoken about their social locations in society and have produced a wealth of knowledge, from enslaved women (Truth 1851; Jacobs 1861; Guy-Sheftall 1995), to blues women (Davis 1999), to owners of beauty shops (Gill 2010; Jacobs-Huey 2006). Additionally, work by renowned anthropologists Zora Neal Hurston (1934, 1935) and Katherine Dunham (1971, 1983, 1969) has centered the lived experiences of Black women in their anthropological scholarship. Although Black feminist scholarship has made significant inroads within anthropology over the last two decades (McClaurin 2001), historical archaeology, as a sub-discipline, has not expanded to widely use this framework,

8 except for a few (Franklin 2001; Battle-Baptiste 2001; Wilkie 2003; Sesma 2016;

Flewellen 2017). Black feminist theory within archaeological research is fairly new – less than twenty years old (Franklin 2001; Battle-Baptiste 2011). It is the centering of intersectionality that differentiates Black feminism, historically, from that of mainstream feminist scholarship in the discipline. It is the latter that sets the foundation for most gender analyses in archaeological research. Although intersectionality has not made substantial inroads within the field of historical archaeology, where it is seen most clearly is in Black feminist archaeological scholarship. A small group of archaeologists, primarily Black women, began asking how the application of Black feminist thought could aid in the interpretation of African American past lived experiences in ways that did not compartmentalize multiple facets of Black women’s experiences but rather interpreted them as wholly complex (Franklin 2001; Battle-Baptist 2011; Agbe-Davies 2001, 2007; see also Wilkie 2003, 2004). This call for Black feminist archaeology was a call for intersectional analysis. The possibilities that Black feminist theory affords to archaeological scholarship on identity formation is far-seeing and the wealth of information to be gained from such an approach has hardly been explored. Black feminist archaeology illuminates how the act of historicizing the positionality of past individuals has to account for the specificities of past operations of race, gender, and class (Crenshaw’s 1991; Hill- Collins 1990; Davis 1981). Through my implementation of a Black feminist framework, I ask how processes of racialization, sexual exploitation and economic disenfranchisement converge and diverge to shape sartorial practices of self-making among African American women in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is through this framework that I demonstrate how axes of power and oppression impacted and shaped the social lives of past African

American women. 9 The implementation of a Black feminist framework within historical archaeology creates space for de-homogenizing studies of identity. The work of Beaudry (1991) and Mullins (2006:35) caution against archaeological scholarship on identity that, in the quest for specificity, runs the risk of essentializing human experiences. Black feminism revels in the complexity of human existence, demanding that “controlling images” of Black women - stereotypes attached to Black female bodies laced with socio-historical ties to racism and sexism - are questioned and complicated (Hill-Collins 1991, 2004; West 1995) (See chapter

2 for detailed discussion on controlling images). Furthermore, in regards to the central objective to de-homogenize African American histories, the application of a Black feminist framework contributes to existing archaeological scholarship on adornment and embodiment (Meskell 2002a, 2002b; Joyce

2005; Fisher and Loren 2003; Heath 2004, 1998; Loren 2001, 2010). While scholarship regarding the materiality of gender performances and embodiment center on performance theory, primarily outlined in mainstream feminist studies by Judith Butler (1990), a few black queer theorists have criticized mainstream feminist scholars (Allen 2012, 2012; Tinsley 2008) for obscuring how race shapes the social world in which women of color operate. With this in mind, Black feminist theory illuminates how the act of historicizing embodiment and performance has to account for the specificities of past intersecting operations of race, gender, and class. This intersectional study foregrounds the interstices of race, gender, and class to posit that the materiality of Black womanhood, as seen through sartorial practices of self- making, are the result of quotidian experiences shaped by structural racism, sexual exploitation and economic disenfranchisement that intersect in complex ways. I argue that in order for archaeologists to interpret how past sartorial practices in which African

10 American women engaged worked as tools for identity formation, they must examine how multiple axes of power and oppression operated in the past. In addition to grounding this research in Black feminist theory, I also pull heavily from scholars that have aided in the development of feminist archaeology and archaeological studies that critically analyze race and racism. In the following section, I outline the work of feminist scholars along with work from scholars who critically examine race and racism within the field. Both of these sub-topics within the field of archaeology are closely related to my research concerns.

PREVIOUS RELATED RESEARCH: FEMINIST ARCHAEOLOGY AND CRITICAL RACE THEORY ARCHAEOLOGY

This section will situate my research within larger discourses in the field of archaeology. As mentioned above, through an intersectional analysis of race, gender, and class, this project examines how Black women used clothing and adornment to fashion an identity in post-emancipation Texas. More specifically, my interpretations consider how race, gender and class operations of power and oppression affected dress practices as seen within spheres of labor, the desire for self-expression, the threat of racialized and gendered violence, and social reproduction. The intersectional analysis that frames this work is borne from Black feminist theory and builds off of Feminist Archaeology and Critical Race Theory Archaeology.

Feminist Archaeology

The work of the scholars I discuss below built the foundation of feminist archaeology. Their engagement with feminist theory in the field, while fruitful, does not always come with an intersectional lens capable of examining multiple facets of identity and how they intersect with one another. However, as my commentary below will 11 demonstrate, archaeologists who produce feminist scholarship within the field critically engage gender as a facet of identity that structured past social lives. Locating African American women’s formations of identity in the past through material culture unearthed in the archaeological record is a project linked to scholarship that calls for the inclusion of gender as a variable worth exploring in the archaeological record. Margaret Conkey and Janet D. Spector (1984) implored archaeologists to challenge androcentric understandings of how gender operated in the past. Archaeologists had previously not interrogated gender, except for a few case studies (Kathleen Deagan 1973). Instead, they continued the propagation of what Conkey and Spector (1984:2) called “gender myths.” That is, archaeological research up until this point was “permeated with assumptions, assertions, and statements of ‘fact’ about gender” that reified androcentric understandings of gender in the past. Gero’s and Conkey’s (1991) insertion of feminist thought within the field criticized longstanding processual archaeological methodologies and interpretations of the past. Specifically they challenged the assertion that men solely underpinned processes of political change in the past, and that women solely conducted politically unimportant domestic work. However, two studies in their edited volume (Hastorf 1991; Brumfiel 1991) illuminated the myriad ways women were involved in empire-making and how their work changed dramatically alongside political changes in per-historic societies. This call to locate women in the archaeological record by exploring the complexity of gender operations in the past was not made in a vacuum. Like the rise of plantation archaeology against the backdrop of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Studies Movements, gender analysis in archaeology followed alongside the rise of feminist movements that were making headway globally (Franklin and Paynter 2001:x).

12 Cheryl Claassen (1992) discusses how second and third wave feminist movements set the foundation for Engendering Archaeology: Women and Prehistory, edited by Joan Gero and Margaret Conkey (1991). It was Gero and Conkey who called for archaeologists to seriously consider how scholarship from feminists in social science fields and within the discipline of history, particularly the work of Judith Butler (1990) and Donna Haraway (1984), analyzed gender as a historical process as well as a space of political engagement. This framework necessitated “fundamental alterations in basic assumptions,” requiring archaeologists to engage in a “painstaking retooling of definitions, data sets, textual sources, and functional assignments” (Gero and Conkey 1991:7). Additionally, a strong cohort of archaeologists (Engelstad 2007; Wylie 2007; Voss 2006; Conkey and Gero 1997; Conkey 2007, 2003), point to how pervasive androcentrism has been within archaeological gender analysis, arguing that aligning oneself with feminism in the field could mean forgoing funding, publishing opportunities and job advancement. Additionally, as Wylie’s (1991; 992; 1997; 2000; 2003; 2007) work can attest, there is great value in doing archaeological work as a feminist. Wylie stated: "what a feminist perspective brings to bear is a critical, theoretically and empirically informed, standpoint on knowledge production” (2007 p.213). Wylie’s (2003) articulation of standpoint epistemology is foundational to feminist archaeology. To practice feminist archaeology involves investing in standpoint epistemologies that value “tacit, experiential knowledge as well as explicit understanding(s)” produced by scholars who firmly speak from a critically reflexive position that accounts for their social location (Wylie 2003: 31). It is this articulation of standpoint theory and standpoint epistemology that underscores Gero and Conkey’s call for “doing archaeology about and/or by women” (1991: 23). I would argue that Wylie’s standpoint theory aided in co-creating fertile grounds for Black feminist archaeology research (discussed in detail above) to flourish in the field. While scholarship 13 within feminist archaeology provided fuller interpretations of the past lived experiences of men, women, children, and elders in the archaeological record, the work of scholars who critically examine race and racism within the field offer a specific theoretical perspective that has also helped structure this project.

Critical Race Studies in Archaeology

The work of the scholars discussed below created the foundation of my engagement with race as one operation of power and oppression that intersects with others and impacts constructions of identity in the past. I argue that race and racism are some of many operations of power and oppression that influenced past dress practices within spheres of labor at home and beyond. It is Orser (1998, 2004), Epperson (1999, 2004) and Mullins’

(1999, 2001, 2012) engagement with race, as a social-cultural construct that demarcates difference - articulated by constraints of power and oppression - that frames my research. Like feminist archaeology, archaeological research that critically examines race and racism, to highlight processes of racialization in the past, often does not examine the ways race intersects with other facets of identity to produce a multiplicity of past experiences within any given racialized group. From its inception, historical archaeology of African American past experiences has concerned itself with identity politics (Fairbanks 1974; Otto 1980; Singleton 1998). It was in 1998 that Theresa Singleton (1998) reiterated the call, made by Langston Hughes during the Harlem Renaissance, for archaeologists to strive for more complex understandings of African American lifeways from enslavement through the Jim Crow era. Examining racial identity formations, and how racism operated in the past within the field of historical archaeology, began against the backdrop of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Studies Movements (Franklin and Paynter 2010). These social movements

14 shifted the academic landscape during the late 1960s through the 1980s, as African

Americans fought for their right to be students at historically all-White universities and later demanded more racial and cultural diversity within coursework being offered (Franklin and Paynter 2010; Gordon 2007; Rojas 2010). These social movements reverberated into the creation of Black Studies departments as well as in the study of African Americans in more depth within social science disciplines (Franklin and Paynter 2010; Harrison and Harrison 1999; McClaurin 2001)

It was largely Terrence Epperson (1999, 2004), Paul Mullins (1999, 2001; 2012), and Charles Orser (1998) whose work on race has shaped how it is studied today within the field. It is the work of these scholars, specifically how they define and examine race, which sets the foundation for my engagement with race and racism within this project. For this project, race is a fluid variable, among many, that shaped and was shaped by historical lifeways in spatially and temporally specific ways. Charles Orser (2004) wrote about the pervasive nature of race on the American landscape and called for archaeologists to study racial formations first by questioning “why it has taken historical archaeology so long to ‘discover’ race as a topic. What is it about the field that tends to make race epiphenomenal or even irrelevant?” (Orser 2004:3). This point spoke widely against processual viewpoints that conclude that race, like gender and other facets of identity, may be beyond the bounds of functional and structural archaeological interpretations of the past, which sought to define universal patterns.

Archaeologists have excavated numerous sites to unearth the archaeological remains of African American lived experiences since the 1970s (Fairbanks 1974; Otto 1980; Ferguson 1980; Baker 1980; Theresa 1999). Theoretical advancements, driven by post-processualism, have attempted to better interpret past African American experiences.

Archaeologists have examined domination and resistance (Stine 1990; Orser 1999; 15 Franklin 2001; Davidson 2004), applied critical race theory (Epperson 1999, 2004), and examined race as it intersects with gender (Nobles 2000; Franklin 2001; Wilkie 2003; Galle 2004; Heath 2004; Battle-Baptiste 2011). The value in examining race is far reaching as it leads to studies regarding how various bodies, not just those of the African Diaspora, were racialized (Meskell 2007; Paynter 2001; Voss and Allen 2008; Williams and Voss 2008; Wilkie 2010). Theoretically, this framework illustrates how race, although a socio-cultural construct, impacted past people’s lived experiences in concretized ways.

Methodologically, this scholarship demonstrates how the materiality of race and racism can be interpreted from artifacts unearthed in the archaeological record. For example, Orser’s (2004:6) work examines the material conditions of Irish immigrants in the United States; his examination of the social location of Irish immigrants provided the

“contextual significance of race and racialization in past sociohistorical formations” which “immediately and forcefully anticipates the development of an archaeology of race, especially within the archaeology of the recent past.” Interpretations regarding how processes of racialization occurred in the past allow for a detailed examination of the multiplicity of Blackness as well as the intricacies of Whiteness in a North American context. Orser’s scholarship sets the foundation for how race and racism should be examined within archaeological research that centers on the African Diaspora. He writes that the four major themes that shape African diaspora archaeology are cultural continuity and cultural change; domination and resistance; theories of race, gender and class; and racial politics (Orser 1998).

Within the legacy of Orser’s work is Terrence Epperson’s scholarship, which examines the value of critical race theory (CRT) to the field of historical archaeology (Epperson 1999, 2004). Epperson writes: “As an outgrowth of the critical legal studies movement, CRT acknowledges, analyzes, and challenges the fundamental role of the law 16 in the construction of racial difference and the perpetuation of racial oppression in

American society” (2004: 101). Epperson writes specifically on the social construction of race and the materiality of that social construction within the archaeological record. Most often, this has meant the use of documentary data that examines how race was constructed at macro and micro levels, from state legislation to planter's daybooks, to provide context to material culture (Beaudry 1993: Heath 2004). Beyond the archaeological record, Epperson also writes about the influence CRT has had on the way historical archaeologists engage with African American scholars, descendant communities, and practices of self- reflexivity. CRT lays at the foundations of Kimberlé Crenshaw’s work, who as a Black Feminist legal scholar calls for intersectionality within studies of race. Additionally, Paul Mullins’ work centers race and class and the impact they had on past African American consumer choices. Although I do not engage explicitly with consumer practices in this research, Mullins’ framework shapes my engagement with race in the project. Through an examination of consumer choice, Mullins interprets the materiality of past African American’s formations of identity. Processes of identity formation become salient in Mullins’ work through an examination of the growth of North American mass consumerism after the first and second Industrial Revolutions, which were built on practices of racialization. Mullins’ work examines the consumer choices African Americans were making, the complexities of racial, class, and gendered demarcations in the United States, and how historically disenfranchised people experienced these structural processes in their everyday lives. Like Mullins, this project aims to highlight the importance of ordinary everyday acts – how someone dresses for the day. These acts have the potential to illuminate interactions and negotiations between and within structure and agency.

17 OVERVIEW OF TERMINOLOGY

Race and Black/ African American

Race, as discussed here, is a facet of identity that shifts over space and time. It is spatially and socially constructed. Its impact, as a classificatory system, is made socially through processes of racialization that group people hierarchically, often based on perceived differences codified during the 15th century as a result of European colonial expansion and the forceful removal of Africans from the continent of Africa via the Trans-

Atlantic slave trade. Although archaeologists have found it difficult to decipher race in the archaeological record (Singleton 1999), Orser (1998) reminds us that race renders itself visible not through the objects themselves but the relationship that objects have in the experiences of everyday life that is shaped by race and racism. I use the terms Black and

African American in this dissertation as a demarcation of people who during the antebellum era were enslaved and whose ancestry is traced to the continent of Africa. At times I use these two terms interchangeably.

Gender

This study includes examining gender as a variable of analysis. Gender in my analysis is not constituted by physical attributes but instead is socially constructed through ideology that works to dictate “gendered activities” and dress (Fisher and Loren 2000). Within this study, gender is one of many operations of power and oppression, and is a facet of identity that is embodied through performance (Butler 1990) and shaped by dominant ideology.

18 OVERVIEW OF DISSERTATION CHAPTERS

The following section outlines my dissertation, which will be comprised of six chapters. Chapter two will provide a historical overview of African American women’s dress practices during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this chapter, I focus on the challenge of locating Black women in the archaeological and archival records, economic constraints and market accessibility among African Americans in Texas, and dress practices at the intersections of race, gender, and class. Chapter three will provide a technical overview of the archaeological work conducted at the Levi Jordan Plantation as well as the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead site. In Chapter four, I provide a detailed overview of the artifact assemblages focusing on the seven cabins analyzed from the Levi Jordan Plantation. I conclude that chapter with a brief examination of the similarities and differences between the clothing and adornment data recovered from the Levi Jordan plantation cabins and the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead. Chapter five will detail my interpretations of the material culture recovered from the Levi Jordan Plantation. In this chapter, through an intersectional lens - focusing on the interstices of race, gender, and class – I interpret how and why practices of dress engaged in by African Americans at the two sites were shaped by race, gender and class oppressions seen through spheres of labor, the desire for self-expression, the threat of racialized and gendered violence, and within processes of social reproduction. Chapter six concludes my work with a discussion regarding the impacts this project has on the field of archaeology. In this conclusion, I focus specifically on the broader implications of grounding intersectional analysis within the field.

19 Chapter 2: Locating African American Women in the Past and Situating their Dress Practices

Slavery itself is not history, only the battle against it. We are thus led to believe that there were no black faces in the colonies, that the good Pilgrims never held anyone in bondage, except in the stocks. But there were, and they did - Darlene Clark Hine (1998: 36)

I open this section with a quote from Darlene Clark Hine’s 1998 work, A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America, in order to situate this project within a genealogy of scholarship dedicated to locating and sharing the past experiences of

African American women in U.S. history. This chapter will focus on the theoretical and analytical tools that scholars, particularly Black women scholars, have used to address the difficulties attributed to locating African American women in the past. I argue that these difficulties are primarily due to silences and practices of erasure in the production of the archival and archaeological records. The work of Black women historians during the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s focused on historical surveys of African American women and their experiences over four centuries, from the 1600s to the more recent past (Hine

1989, 1994, 1998; Terborg-Penn 1998; Giddings 1984, 2008; Bettye Collier-Thomas 1998; and Deborah Gray White 1999). Their work was built on the lives and scholarship of Black women who lived from the mid to late 19th century, and is a recognition of these women’s achievements (See Wheatley 1773; Truth 1850; Jacobs 1861; Copper 1892, 1925; Wells 1895, 1892a, 1892b; Terrell 1940; Guy-Sheftall 1995). The scholarship of Hine (1998) and White (1999) specifically searched for the “interior lives” (Morrison 1992) of African American women during the antebellum and postbellum eras. Their work and the work of their predecessors spoke to the continuous “battle” against slavery that Hine conceptualizes in the quote with which I opened this chapter. Slavery, as defined by Hine, was the result of fifteenth-century European

20 expansion that violently transported enslaved Africans from the continent of Africa to the

Americas, whereupon the enslaved were forced into a life of servitude. The “battle” that Hine references is the historiography of U.S. slavery where the experiences of enslaved African Americans, and later their descendants, are solely discussed as commodities. This process of commodification also resulted in erasing and obscuring histories from the perspective of the enslaved, as the documents that now fill archive collections around the world are labyrinths wherein African American names and lifeways are scarcely visible, and when they do appear, they move in and out of obscurity (Hine 1998; Hartman 2008). This is particularly true for enslaved and free African and African descendant women, as operations of sexism and racism further silenced and erased their complex histories (Hine 1998; White 1999; Hartman 2008).

LOCATING AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN IN U.S. HISTORY

Silences within U.S. history, represented by archival and archaeological interpretations of the past, are not innocuous. Rather, they are indicative of operations of power and oppression inherent in the processes of creating and disseminating U.S. history. The production of history is an ongoing process where actors and narrators create “both 'what happened' and 'that which is said to have happened’” (Trouillot 2012:02). By locating silences within processes of historical production, Trouillot (2012: 26) illuminates how fundamentally ambiguous the historicity of history is. He states that

Silences enter the process of historical production at four crucial moments: the moment of fact creation (the making of sources); the moment of fact assembly (the making of archives); the moment of fact retrieval (the making of narratives); and the moment of retrospective significance (the making of history in the final instance).

21 Trouillot’s foundational analysis of historical production illuminated the work necessary to locate the historical narratives of people “without history” (Wolf 1982). Scholars wishing to locate the historical narratives of African American women must engage in the process of analyzing the creation and reification of silences within the historiography of the Americas. Saidiya Hartman’s (1997, 2007, 2008) work illustrates how Black and Brown women occupy spaces of silence and have been subject to erasure within the histories of the Americas. It is within these uncharted “ungeographic spaces”

(McKittrick 2006) that Black women emerge. For Hartman, the historiography of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade is grounded in epistemologies of the “fort or barracoon,” and focused on the quantitative. This focus on the “fort or barracoon” renders Black bodies as commodities within the historiography of the Americas and reflects inequalities they live with in the present. Additionally, this facilitates scholars’ violent encounters with women of the African diaspora through dominant representations or elite documents (Hartman 2008:4-5; 1997:11). Expanding on this point, Hartman (2008:3) elaborates how archival violence (e.g., silences and erasures) highlights the racialized and sexualized intersecting facets of identity that comprise the social positionality of Black women during enslavement. Hartman (2008:3) states that researchers come to the Black feminine body in the archive through “little more than a register of her encounters with power” and that these encounters provide “a meager sketch of her existence." Both Trouillot and Hartman call for a re-imagining of the archive as a pedagogical tool to push back against the hegemonic historiography of the Americas that silences and erases subjugated people. Hartman specifically calls for insertion of the creative as a way to address the lack of archival documentation on African descendant American women. In this way, Hartman (2008) is attempting to blur the spaces between what has historically been positioned as oppositional within academic disciplines, specifically the ideas of the 22 archive as fact and the imaginative (embodied experience) as fiction. Twentieth-century

African American women fiction writers have long used the creative as a means of locating African American women and themselves in the historiography of the United States. Hine (1998:21) states that “We can see now that the courage, strength, and resourcefulness contemporary readers have come to expect from characters in the novels of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker and in the poetry of Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Rita Dove are genuine. They existed in the characters and lives of thousands of black women from colonial America through the American Revolution to the terrible years of antebellum slavery.” For authors like Toni Morrison, the imaginative becomes an avenue into the “interior lives” (Morrison 1992) of the enslaved, making audible the voices that are not heard in the historical archive of slavery and making visible the words outside of what is written in slave narratives of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These novelists are not necessarily interested in a conceptualization of “facts” dependent on the validation of the archives, which have historically buttressed structural racism and sexism by erasing the livelihoods of African American women. Instead, they are concerned with a greater form of “truth” which, as Morrison (1992) writes, is intricately linked to memory and the imaginative. In A Shining Thread of Hope, Hine’s (1998:21) creation of Oni, a fictional character that gave physicality to the first enslaved women brought to Jamestown in 1619, and which also countered the scarce documentation of her in the archive, is a predecessor to Hartman’s (2008) re-imagining of Venus and the experiences of Black women during the Middle Passage. Both authors, in attempting to locate Black women in the past, sought to chart the “ungeographic” (McKittrick 2006) spaces of U.S. history through an insertion of the creative. The spaces of silence in the archival and archaeological records represent the erasure and violence enacted on Black women through obscuring their historical presence 23 and agency. Utilizing the imaginative and storytelling within academic scholarship is one of the tools at the disposal of scholars who conduct this research. Within archaeological scholarship, Whitney Battle-Baptiste (2011) blends her auto-ethnographic accounts, which read as storytelling elements, to illuminate the past lifeways of African women that archaeologists examine as well as Black women who work as archaeologists either as students or as professionals. The archive and the archaeological record are geographies of academic creation; both are spaces created within institutions that uphold structural racism, sexism, and classism - among other “isms” - that work to oppress, silence, and erase subjugated people’s histories through a disavowal of their presence in the past and the present. Both the archive and archaeological record are components within processes of historical production, and as such harbor the “ungeographic.” I believe that the

“ungeographic” is akin to Trouillot’s conceptualization of “silences,” which form at the moment of fact creation, the moment of fact assembly, the moment of fact retrieval, and the moment of retrospective significance (Trouillot 2012: 26) through the production of the archival and archaeological records. McKittrick’s (2006: xxvi) conceptualization of the “ungeographic” stems from her examination of how “geography and blackness work together to advance a different way of knowing and imagining the world.” McKittrick’s work is an investment in dismantling traditional geographies that leave Black spaces, Black bodies, and Black ways of experiencing the world “ungeographic.” How McKittrick’s theorization centers the physical body builds upon the scholarship of Trouillot (2012) and Hartman (2008) and is relevant to this research project.

For McKittrick, geographies are always racialized, gendered, sexed, and classed, and these facets of geography are always written onto bodies and the historical narratives constituted around those bodies. In this way, geographies and palimpsest (see chapter one) are highly similar; both are historical processes that constitute Black women, specifically their bodies 24 and historical narratives, through historical operations of power and oppression. Thus, the nature of historical production, and the creation and reification of palimpsests and geographies steeped in histories of oppression, are directly connected to the past and present treatment of oppressed people. A framework that conceptualizes processes of historical production that center on the body necessitates an intersectional analysis that focuses on how power and oppression construct past peoples’ social positionalities. Intersectionality, pioneered by Crenshaw (1989, 1991) and built upon by Collins’ (1991) canonical work Black Feminist Thought, accounts for how multiple axes of power operate and intersect to illuminate the complexity of human subjectivity. Within McKittrick’s Demonic Grounds, the “ungeographic” are “the space of otherness, the grounds of being human” (McKittrick 2006:123). Locating African American women in the archival and archaeological records is an attempt at locating “the complex position and potentiality of black women's sense of place” and offers a “re-presenting” of “fullness” (McKittrick 2006:133).

Within the field of African diaspora archaeology, research conducted by women on Lucy Foster’s homestead over the last two decades have led to a “re-presenting” of African American women in ways that offer a “fullness” to their complex existences in the 19th century. In 1942, Adelaide K. Bullen and Ripley P. Bullen conducted the first documented excavation that focused on the past lifeways of an African American at Lucy Foster’s Homestead. Lucy Foster occupied the site from 1815 until her death in 1845. Bullen and

Bullen’s technical report on the Foster homestead excavations, published in 1945, was highly descriptive, outlining the variety of ceramics that Foster acquired during her lifetime. The authors stated that “while we know about most of the landmarks in Lucy’s life, something about the clothes she wore and the food she ate, we can only surmise about

25 her as an individual. She seems to have been a worthy, respected, and faithful person with a flair for collecting pottery” (Bullen and Bullen 1945:28). Vernon G. Baker revisited Foster’s artifact assemblage in an attempt to locate Africanisms that may have pointed to markers of “Afro-American culture” (Baker

1980:35). Baker’s reexamination of the site pulled from the work of Otto (1975, 1977), who examined status and wealth differences at Canon’s Point Plantation in Florida through a comparative analysis of ceramic assemblages recovered at sites related to planters, overseers, and the enslaved. Early examinations of class within African diaspora archaeology such as Otto’s began with plantation studies. John Otto's work pioneered these studies, seeking to interpret patterns in food consumption (e.g., sawed or cut fauna, hollow or flat ceramic ware types) that may speak to the social status of various occupants of a plantation. Likewise, Baker’s ceramic analysis of Foster’s assemblage focused on various types of serving and storage ceramics rather than the decorative styles. He concluded that the Foster assemblage asserted more about her economic status than a distinctive African

American culture. Whitney Battle-Baptist (2011) then revisited the assemblage, applying a Black feminist framework to address the complexity in Lucy Foster’s social positionality, questioning Baker’s conclusions by asking: “which becomes the main focus of interpretation, poverty or race? Do they become the same?” (2011:115). Battle-Baptiste (2011:116) uses an intersectional analysis, stating:

Lucy Foster’s site provides a glimpse into a distinct site occupied by a woman who had to work inside and outside of her home to survive. What role that played in the way that the Bullens and Baker understood the site may never be known, however. This is why it remains essential for us to look back, reflect, and at times even alter sites that were excavated and interpreted in the past (Battle-Baptist 2011: 116).

26 Battle-Baptiste’s work at the Foster Homestead asked what interpretations of

Foster’s life could be possible with the application of a theoretical lens that accounted for the ways race, gender, and class intersected to shape Lucy Foster’s lived experience. In essence, through a Black feminist framework, she addressed the silencing of Lucy Foster’s complex, lived experience. In addition to the work of Battle-Baptiste a few other archaeologists, primarily Black women, have researched the complex historical lifeways of African American women using archaeological and documentary evidence (Heath 2004,

1998, 1994; Galle and Young 2004; Galle 2004; Thomas and Thomas 2004; Franklin 2001; Wilkie 2003). Locating these complex histories and unearthing these subjugated individuals in the archive and archaeological records is an attempt at “re-presenting” the “fullness” of

African American women’s past lived experiences through the telling of an “impossible story” that simultaneously amplifies “the impossibility of its telling” (Hartman 2008:11). Like the work of Battle-Baptiste, this dissertation project attempts to do this work. Through an examination of the material remains unearthed at the Levi Jordan Plantation and archival documentation, this project tells an impossible story of how quotidian dress practices shaped and were shaped by the past lived experiences of African American women during a period of social reform that brutally oppressed them. Through an examination of the ways race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression impacted the sartorial practices of African American women in postbellum Texas, I am attempting to locate their complex histories in the historiography of the Americas. This work attempts to challenge epistemologies grounded in the “fort or barracoon” (Hartman 2008:4-5) that focus on the quantitative by usurping historical narratives of “fullness.” The following section titles are based on the scholarship of Zora Neal Hurston

(1935, 1928, 1934), whose work as a cultural anthropologist and novelist blended the social 27 sciences with the art of storytelling to illustrate the lived experiences of African American women during the late 19th and 20th centuries. The first section is entitled “Mules and Men,” based on Hurston’s auto-ethnographical account of the lifeways of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction South, and the treatment of African American women. In this section, I will provide an overview of Black women’s labor in Texas. The next section is entitled “How It Feels To Be Colored Me,” which will examine the rise of mass-produced goods in gulf coast Texas counties and the processes of racialization that accompanied the rise of mass consumerism and its impact on African Americans. The last section is entitled “The Will to Adorn,” which historically contextualizes dress practices during slavery and after. My goal here is to relate how gender, race and class variously influenced African Americans’ sartorial practices over time.

“MULES AND MEN:” BLACK WOMEN’S LABOR IN TEXAS

Back in the quarters, the sun was setting. Plenty women over the cookpot scorching up supper. Lots of them were already thru cooking, with the pots shoved to the back of the stove while they put on fresh things and went out in front of the house to see and be seen (Hurston 1935:138). I open this section with a quote from Zora Neal Hurston’s Mules and Men, where she discusses the treatment of women in the U.S. South during the early to mid 20th century. Hurston's auto-ethnography, one of the first anthropological texts to examine the lifeways of African Americans written from the viewpoint of a Black woman, illuminates the ways racism and sexism worked to commodify and dehumanize Black women. While Black men and women performed the same agricultural labor, sexism and racism intersected in particular ways at micro and macro levels (both inside of homes and outside of them), which worked to sustain ideologies that underlays Hurston’s metaphor of African American women being “mules” - seen as merely good for the work they do. The opening

28 quote demonstrates an aspect within the everyday lives of African American women who, after completing their daily tasks, be it agricultural labor, working as a domestic servant, or a combination of the two, went back to their homes to prepare dinner for themselves and their families, working “over the cookpot scorching up supper.” The second half of the quote leads us into the following sections in the chapter, specifically the rise of mass- produced goods in Texas and dress practices among African American women who, within the “matrix of domination” (Hill-Collins 2002), “put on fresh things and went out in the front of the house to see and be seen” (Hurston 1935:138). The aftermath of emancipating roughly four million formerly enslaved African Americans from servitude left newly-freed people with new possibilities and challenges throughout the U.S. South. Shortly after emancipation, to stabilize the U.S. Southern economy, which was based on agricultural production, the Union army encouraged newly- emancipated African Americans to return to their former occupations (Ruef and Fletcher 2003: 453). In Dave Byrd’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) ex-enslaved person’s narrative, he stated that “from the day we were turned loose, we had to shoulder the whole load. Taxes to pay, groceries to buy, and what did we get? Nothing’’ (Sitton and Conrad 2008:17). Byrd’s words echo that of many emancipated African Americans, who found themselves struggling economically to situate themselves in an economy built off of their free labor, in a society structured around racism, sexism, and classism – among many “isms” – that worked to oppress them. The jobs available for African Americans were the same jobs relegated to Black people during enslavement. After 1865, African Americans worked as agricultural labors, semi-skilled industrial workers, and domestic servants, but now they now had taxes to pay and groceries to buy. Kenneth Brown’s two decades of work at the LJP, along with the work of his students (Cooper 1989; Brown 2001; Wright 1994; Harris 1999; Barns 1999; Gasaway- 29 Hill 1997; Garcia-Herreros 1998; Bruner 1996; Paup 2001; Brown and Cooper 1990;

Brown 2004), have yielded not only over 600,000 artifacts but a wealth of archival data that paints a detailed image of the kinds of labor African Americans engaged in at the LJP following emancipation. Labor organization at the LJP shifted from a gang labor system during the antebellum era to a production system that included wage laborers, sharecroppers, and tenant farmers (Brown 2013: 46; Berlin and Morgan 1993; Morgan 1998; Sitton and Conrad 2005: 16). Institutional structures of racism, classism, and sexism formed the foundation of wage, sharecropping, and tenant farming agricultural labor (Ruef and Fletcher 2003: 447; Crouch 2007: 69-92). These institutions were built to sustain the social and economic fabric of the antebellum south. Credit and lien based systems where implemented, which effectively kept Black people indebted to plantation owners, reproducing conditions of enslavement. Brown (2013) cites entries in the LJP ledger that outline the names of sharecroppers and tenant farmers, along with crop production and wages from 1874 through 1876. Evidently, a shift from sugar production to cotton production took place during the 1870s at the LJP. The shift in crop production from sugar to cotton reflected a general shift in the sugar economy of Texas after the Civil War. During this time, mid 19th-century wartime conditions made marketing the crop particularly difficult, and the emancipation of all enslaved Africans interrupted the labor needed for cultivation and harvest (Watts 1969). Unlike other sugar plantations in the area that addressed this interruption by using convict labor, the LJP shifted to producing cotton during the late 1870s (Brown 2004, 2012). Brown (2013:46) states:

One of these postbellum plantation ledgers notes that sharecroppers paid fifty percent of the cotton they produced their share. Based upon the same ledger, tenants paid a rent of $25.00 for their cabin, $40.00 for the use of a mule, and various amounts for seed and other items owned by Jordan or, later, his executors and leased for use on the land they rented. The data gathered from these ledgers

30 appears to demonstrate that only a few of the plantation’s freedmen were sharecroppers, the majority labored as tenants and for wages (Brown 2013:46).

In addition to documenting the production and wage totals for sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and wage laborers, Brown’s archival research also unearthed agricultural schedules from the 1870 and 1880 Federal Censuses, which document African American residents managing their own subsistence plots cultivating “corn, sweet potatoes, and peas” as well as raising “livestock such as beef, pigs, and chickens” (Brown 2012: 47). In addition to agricultural labor that upheld the southern economy and agricultural subsistence needs met by cultivating small crops that could be used as a means for additional income, African American women also partook in homemaking chores. Jones notes that, “Few rural women enjoyed a respite from the inexorable demands of the day-to-day household tasks or the annual cycle of cotton cultivation (Jones 2010:85). Labor for African American women at the LJP included both laboring in the field and at home (Table 2.1).

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Agricultural Tasks Land Preparation

Planting seed

Seed Sowing

Irrigation

Fertilizing

Harvesting

Homemaking/ Domestic Gathering wood Tasks Gathering water

Tending to livestock

Preparing food

Canning produce

Laundering and mending clothing

Childcare

Table 2.1 The table outlines agricultural and homemaking/domestic tasks requiring the labor of African American women at the Levi Jordan Plantation. Based on tasks outlined in Sharpless 1999: 160; Jones 2010; Fox-Genovese 1988.

32 Agricultural labor, domestic labor, and childrearing were tasks not only conducted by African American women in Texas during the late 19th century. White, Black and Latinx women on the frontier faced the realities of labor-intensive lives that challenges the prevailing ideology of femininity that percolated out from urban centers in both the North and South (Sharpless 1999: 160; Jones 2010; Fox-Genovese 1988). However, African American women engaged in more agricultural labor outside the house than their White and Latinx counterparts (Sharpless 1999: 164). Analyzing the similarities and differences between and within groups of people illuminates "pedagogies of crossing," where differences are experienced and highlighted to acknowledge nuanced dissimilarities that shaped people’s lived experiences (Alexander 2006: 7-8). Doing this work provides a more holistic understanding of the different oppressions people endured and how those oppressions converged and diverged situationally over time. A key difference between Black, White, and Latinx women in Texas were the colonial and antebellum histories that constructed their social positionality. These nuances must be taken into consideration when interpreting archeological material that relates to the lived experiences of those women. These distinctions are something not readily captured in the archaeological record but are a necessary framework in the interpretative process that seeks out the "interior lives"

(Morrison 1992: 91) of people and the clothing that dressed those lives. Another distinction between African American women and their White counterparts, both men and women, were differences in pay for the labor they performed.

Black women who were wage laborers, sharecroppers and tenant farmers were paid less than White and Black men who conducted the same agricultural labor. Couch (2007: 77) writes that Black women “received only one-half to two-thirds the pay of men when cash was still used as payment for plantation work.” Labor contracts were binding with stipulations that plantation owners could withold pay and take the assets of their workers 33 if contracts were not fulfilled. However, during the time the Freedmen's Bureau was in operation in Texas, African American women took full advantage of the ability to file claims against their employers for wages or shares they were owed for their labor as well as the labor of their children.

In addition to working in the fields as wage, sharecropping, or tenant farmers, African American women also labored as domestic servants in the homes of White families. The controlling image of the "Mammie" (see chapter 5) was born from the depiction of African American women who labored over a lifetime in the homes of White families, cooking, cleaning, caring for children, and mending and laundering clothing (Figure 2.1). In regards to mending and laundering clothing, archaeologists have interpreted the high counts of buttons at domestic sites as possible evidence of women working as seamstresses and laundresses (Mullins 1999:33; Heath 1999; Yamin 2005: 8).

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Figure 2.1 Daguerreotype of African American women with two White children. Description reads “African American nurse with two young children. In ornamental case.” Curtesy of Cornell University’s Loewentheil Collection of African-American Photographs

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Some scholars have written that the labor of Black domestic servants in the southern and northern United States led to the development of White women’s social movements of the late 19th and early 20th century (Couch 2007). Black domestics were, in fact, integrated into the very framework of southern life, working in proximity to White men and women. The antebellum and postbellum eras left Black domestic servants vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse from the White men and women who employed them (Hill-Collins 2002, 1998; Colman 1987; Harriet Jacobs 1861). Colman (1987:34) wrote that for African

American women, “[t]he work is low paid, has few benefits, and exposes women to the threat and reality of sexual harassment. Black domestics could see the dangers awaiting their daughters.” Even with the low pay, many African American women found themselves as the sole breadwinners for their families. In the section below I point out that while the economic realities that African Americans experienced after emancipation were challenging, they still participated in the market economy. The LJP store on site as well as the shops throughout Brazoria and nearby counties stocked their shelves with mass-produced goods, including ready-made clothing and other cheap consumer goods that were accessible to African Americans (Carnevali 2011:295-297; Mullins 1999: 24; Jones: 2000: 299). African Americans during the late

19th and early 20th century now had access to mass-produced goods, although within geographic (i.e., distance to markets) and economic limitations.

“HOW IT FEELS TO BE COLORED ME:” MARKET ACCESSIBILITY AND THE RISE OF MASS PRODUCED GOODS IN TEXAS

I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background. – In How It Feels To Be Colored Me by Zora Neal Hurston (1928)

36 I open the section with a quote from Hurston’s How It Feels To Be Colored Me to begin a discussion about African American experiences in Texas in regards to their consumer practices during the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. This section will focus specifically on the rise of mass consumer culture and processes of racialization that accompanied it. I want to situate Hurston’s words as a metaphor for the late 19th and 20th century, where processes of racialization worked through the marketing of goods that reified racist, sexist, and classist ideologies which made blackness hyper-visible when

“thrown against” the “sharp white background.” The sharp white background in this metaphor is the “somatic norm” (Puwar 2004) of humanity to which goods were marketed, often demarcated as white and male. Mass consumer culture was brought on by the advent of the first and second Industrial Revolutions, which gave rise to mail-order catalogs which enabled more individuals to purchase goods throughout the United States (Figure 2.2).

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Figure 2.2 Sear, Roebuck and Co 1896 catalog advertisement for their mail order services

38 Scholarly perspectives that attempt to insinuate that Africans Americans only had enough money for subsistence needs (Jones 1985) work to emphasize the realities of economic hardships African Americans faced following emancipation. However, a wealth of archaeological research has found that Black people during enslavement and throughout the Reconstruction era found ways to purchase goods beyond the needs of subsistence, especially with the unearthing of clothing and adornment artifacts (Heath 1999, 2004; Galle 2004; Thomas and Thomas 2004; Wilkie 2003). I do not want to misconstrue the fact that material conditions of African Americans were challenging. Rather, I am interested in countering narratives that posit that African Americans, due to their economic hardship - a class status maintained through structural racism - only spent money on their subsistence needs and did not engage in consumer culture or acquire items of dress. Lee (2014) addresses a similar notion regarding what she calls the myth of "Black landlessness." Lee writes that scholars often overlooked the minority of black landowners that acquired land following the Civil War. Although their numbers were few, their presence does not negate the lived realities of the majority of African Americans who systematically were denied land or, as a result of structural racism, were forced into labor contracts (Lee 2014:30). Lee’s research and my own both attempt to complicate the historical narratives regarding the post-emancipation experiences of African Americans by illuminating their multiplicity of experiences. As previously stated, African Americans had access to mass-produced goods with certain constraints. Having addressed economic limitations, here I focus on the factor of space and travel, or the “geographic limitations” to consumerism. The LJP is located in Brazoria County, between Matagorda County and Galveston County, along the gulf coast (Figure 2. 4). While the county’s location along the gulf coast would prove to be detrimental to the sugar industry in the mid-20th century (due to deadly hurricanes that 39 stirred up the gulf; Watts 1969), its location did provide easy access to Atlantic waterways for the transportation of goods and people. Sean Kelley (2008) discusses the illegal smuggling of enslaved Africans into Brazoria County, which was feasible in large part because of Brazoria’s location on the gulf. Additionally, Hardwick (2003) called Galveston the “Ellis Island of Texas” because of the number of European immigrants that came into the United States through the gulf coast ports of Texas during the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century. Brazoria County, as a port county, provided shops in the region access to goods for purchase by county residents. Brown's (2013: 46) archival research revealed that African Americans that lived at the LJP bought goods from the Jordan store, as well as from other shops in Brazoria County, with cash and store credit. Stores in Brazoria County, along with individual residents, also had access to goods found within the pages of Sears and Roebuck Co. and Montgomery Ward Co. catalogs. In Hurston’s (1935: 24) interview with Gene Brazzle, Gene stated that “…De trouble is you women ain’t good for nothin’ exceptin’ readin’ Sears and Roebuck’s bible and hollerin’

’bout, ‘gimme dis and gimme dat’ as soon as we draw our pay.” Hurston (1925: 67) further notes how she “mentally cursed the $12.74 dress from Macy’s” that she wore while other women were wearing their “$1.98 mail-order dresses.” African Americans had easy access to mail-order catalogs, and this is especially true of Texas residents. In 1906, Richard Sears chose to build the first Sears, Roebuck and Co. merchandise distribution center outside of Chicago in Dallas due to the high number of sales coming from the state.

With Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs in hand, African Americans had access to the latest trends in clothing, furniture, hardware, jewelry and much more. The companies’ catalogs illustrated trends in clothing, and as fashion shifted from season to season, consumers were presented with advertisements of the latest goods and cuts of cloth

(Cohen 1940; Paoletti 1987; Tortora and Eubank 2010: 382-383). Trends in feminine and 40 masculine clothing were illustrated on the black and white pages of the late-19th century catalogs and through this new avenue of marketing, the socialization of gender performance through dress was reinforced (Paoletti 1987, 1983; Tortora and Eubank 2010: 382-383; Setnik 2012: 81). The models in these period catalogs were white as companies pandered to White middle-class American consumers. Historical archaeologist Paul Mullins (1999, 2001, 2012) examined processes of racialization via the rise of mass consumer culture. Through an examination of consumer choice, Mullins interprets the materiality of past African Americans’ formations of identity along the lines of race and class. Mullins (2006:4) writes:

American consumer culture was, in one sense, racist in its regulations, structural socioeconomic inequality, and anti-Black animosity. Racism refers to the more or less consciously apprehended, structured regulation of color-based ethnocentrism, such as public segregation, labor exclusions, and racist caricatures, that remains familiar to all but the most naive contemporary Americans. In another sense, American society was racialized by the implicit reduction of all social, class, and cultural distinctions to racial differences (2006: 4). Mullins’ work examines the consumer choices African Americans were making in urban Maryland, and how they experienced race and class in their everyday lives. He takes seriously the quotidian and mundane, such as the purchase of decorative ceramic figurines, as essential factors in the construction of African American identity formations. One such quotidian practice that I suggest had import was how someone dressed for the day. The following section considers dress practices at the intersection of race, gender, and class during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

“THE WILL TO ADORN:” CONTEXTUALIZING AFRICAN AMERICAN DRESS PRACTICES

The will to adorn is the second most notable characteristic in Negro Express. Perhaps his idea of ornament does not attempt to meet conventional standards, but it satisfies the soul of its creator. – In Characteristics of Negro Expression by Zora Neal Hurston (1938:24)

41 I open this last section with a quote from Hurston’s Characteristics of Negro

Expression, where she analyzed the cultural forms of African Americans from their dress to their cooptation of the English language through their use of metaphor. The quote cited speaks directly to the dress practices of African Americans in the early 20th century.

Hurston states that the ideologies that African Americans may hold regarding appropriate dress practices do not “meet conventional standards, but... satisf[y] the soul of its creator” which my project builds on. African American women, I argue, did not meet the

“conventional standard” of womanhood and femininity, and as such the clothes they chose to wear spoke to the push and pull of constructions of Black womanhood as it ebbed and flowed with and against hegemonic notions of femininity. In Chapter one I use the term “palimpsest” to refer to African American women’s bodies as texts layered with histories of oppression which shaped past and shape present formations of their identities. Stated another way, Black women's bodies - before they are/were dressed – have a history written on them that is read by others through the color of their flesh and the texture of their hair as outside the realm of hegemonic femininity and womanhood. Black women’s “will to adorn” their bodies adds another layer. The act of dressing speaks to a process of layering – creating and reinforcing a palimpsest - that has the potential to counter “conventional standards” and to “satisfy the soul of its creator.” Dressing, however, does not erase histories of oppression already written on their flesh. Historical processes of racialization make the everyday act of dressing a negotiation with power and oppression. The relationship between dress and racialization dates back to institutionalized slavery.

Mariah Snyder, Horace Overstreet, Martha Patton, Jenny Proctor, and other WPA interviewees spoke of sartorial practices that were racialized, with differences in dress practices between Black enslaved laborers and White overseers, planters, and farmers.

These differences were hyper-visible because those who were enslaved were provided 42 coarse clothing made with "Lowell" and homespun cloth. As Martha Patton noted, she was provided two sets of clothing for the year, cotton clothing for the summer and wool for the winter (Patton 932: 179). Colonial-era sumptuary laws implemented throughout the Americas included restrictions on dress that were used to demarcate social difference by regulating appropriate types of clothing according to the status of the wearer (Stoler 2001:836; Wiecek 1977:268). For example, South Carolina enacted a sumptuary law in 1740 which stated that enslaved persons could not wear "any sort of apparel whatsoever, finer, other, or of greater value than negro cloth, duffils, kerseys, osnabrigs, blue linen, check linen or coarse garlix, or callicoes, checked cottons, or Scotch plaids" (Wiecek 1997:268). Although there is no strong evidence that these laws were heavily enforced (Hunt 1996: x), their existence stands as evidence to how governments attempted to regulate dress, and the ways dress acted as a mechanism through which differences could be demarcated and surveilled in society. The practice of legally attempting to demarcate difference through appearance has a long history, and sumptuary laws were in place during the colonial era in New York (Bianco et al. 2006) and Spanish Florida (Stoler 2001:836). As demonstrated by the WPA ex-slave narratives, these ideas continued to circulate throughout the antebellum period, entrenched more by custom than by law. Moreover, clothing distributed to the enslaved differed by gender, following traditional gender roles and Christian religious ideology of the time that preached modesty through the covering of the body (White and White 1995:

180, 1995: 72). Following emancipation, sumptuary laws and slaveowners’ clothing rations no longer imposed restrictions on how African Americans chose to dress, although white societal expectations regarding Black sartorial practices did assert influence (as discussed below and in Chapter 5).

43 Unlike homespun and Lowell cloth, the rise of ready-made clothing in the late 19th century, along with new technologies for the mass production of clothing fasteners, and the invention of the sewing machine in 1846, shifted southern dress practices among White and Black Americans alike. African Americans had more choices with regards to the types of clothing and clothing fasteners they could purchase. While African American men and women had greater access to a diverse range of choices for clothing, threats of violence coated in racist and sexist ideologies also impacted the dress practices of African

Americans. While sumptuary laws no longer existed, new threats of white terror rose in the wake of emancipation that made dressing a precarious endeavor, as one method employed by Whites to dehumanize African Americans was to strip them of their clothing. As I discuss in more detail in Chapter 5, for White Americans, “the changed look of African Americans was the most visible and obvious result of emancipation” (White and White 1998:88). Emancipation provided avenues for African Americans to transform the Black social body through dress. However, “clothing’s potential to transform the social body…existed in tension with regulations that sought to control such bodies” (Voss 2008:406). Although Barbara Voss was referring to colonial California, I find her observation relevant here. Thus, “feelings of disquiet” among Whites surrounding the dress practices of African Americans occurred alongside the rise of racial violence towards their bodies (White and White 1998:87-88).

Where this is seen most explicitly is in the case of African American veterans. The

Equality and Justice Initiative (EJI) 2015 report stated that “No one was more at risk of experiencing violence and targeted racial terror than black veterans who had proven their valor and courage as soldiers during the Civil War, World War I, and World War II” (EJI

2015). The EJI report is based on primary sources, including newspaper clippings, and oral 44 histories from survivors of violence. One such account is that of James Neely from

Hampton, Georgia; the report (EJI 2015) states that:

On August 19, 1898, Private James Neely of the 25th Infantry — an all-black regiment that had just returned from heralded service in Cuba during the Spanish- American War — visited the small town of Hampton, Georgia, on a day pass from his post at Fort Hobson. Newspapers reported that Private Neely came into Hampton wearing his blue uniform and bayonet at his side; yet when he entered the local drug store and ordered a soda at the counter, the white owner told him black customers had to order and drink outside in the rear. Private Neely protested, the two men argued, and Private Neely was thrown out of the store and onto the street outside, where the conflict attracted attention. As Private Neely continued to insist that he had rights as an American and a soldier, a crowd of armed white men gathered and chased him down the road, firing their weapons. Private Neely was later found dead of gunshot wounds (EJI 2015). For African American men, the uniform itself became a symbol of defiance against the status quo in the racist, southern U.S. However, African American men, women, and children did not need to be in army uniforms to catch the wrath of White terrorism that flooded the South during the postbellum era. Sitton and Conrad (2005: 158), referring to post-bellum Texas, wrote that "silk shirts, Stetson hats, and dress pants could arouse white disapproval, especially during the work week, when blacks were supposed to be in the field.” The authors (2005:158) went on to cite an incident in Rusk County, Texas, when "Sheriff Bill Brunt made a black man in dress pans stand while he cut them off above the knees with his pocket knife—thus literally ‘cutting his britches off’” (2005:158). Nonetheless, while the time period in question brought with it new economic and social hardships, African Americans dressed daily, fashioning for themselves an identity that

“satisfie[d] the soul of its creator” (Hurston 1936:24)

CONCLUSION

Locating African American women in the archaeological and archival records can be particularly challenging for scholars of antebellum and postbellum histories. The 45 experiences of African American women have been overlooked in the historiography of the past. Couch (2007:20) wrote that “the most neglected group in Texas Reconstruction writings is women.” The work of Black women scholars in the field of history (Hine 1989, 1994, 1998; Terborg-Penn 1998; Giddings 1984, 2008; Bettye Collier-Thomas 1998;

White 1999) and archaeology (Franklin 2001; Battle-Baptiste 2001; Wilkie 2003; Sesma 2016; Flewellen 2017) have developed their analytical tools to fill in silences and to write historical narratives that have been erased in U.S. history. Analyzing the sartorial choices

African American women were making in Texas is a project that also illuminates how they were able to acquire clothing fasteners, glass beads, combs, and earrings during the broader social and economic transformations that took place during the postbellum era. While financial constraints were present, Black women worked in the fields as agricultural labors and in the homes of White families as domestic servants. Their labor provided them with resources at times beyond their subsistence needs. As the archaeological evidence illuminates, they were able to acquire goods – with some constraints - to dress and adorn their bodies, and the ways in which they did so speak to the intersection of race, gender, and class oppression.

46 Chapter 3: Levi Jordan Plantation and Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead Project Excavations and Results

This chapter will provide an overview of the archaeological work conducted at the Levi Jordan Plantation (LJP) and the Ransom and Sarah William Farmstead (RSWF). I will begin by outlining archaeological work conducted at the LJP starting in 1986 under the directorship of Dr. Kenneth Brown of the University of Houston. I will then discuss current work being done to re-catalogue and reinterpret the site, now under the stewardship of the Texas Historical Commission (THC). My overview will focus on the excavations that took place in and around the domestic structures (including the cabins) where enslaved individuals, and later, Black tenant, sharecropping and wage laborer farmers, lived and labored. I will then briefly discuss the results of my analysis which will provide additional information on the artifact assemblages. I conclude my discussion by focusing on the clothing and adornment artifacts unearthed from the LJP Quarters. The sections following will focus on the RSWF Project, and the clothing and adornment artifacts recovered from excavations at the site. Since there is both a dissertation and comprehensive technical report based on this site (see Prewitt et. al 2015 and Lee 2014), for the purposes of my analysis I will only provide a brief overview of the project. I conclude this chapter by introducing the subsequent data analysis and findings that will be discussed in more detail in the succeeding chapters.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL WORK CONDUCTED AT THE LEVI JORDAN PLANTATION FROM 1986 TO PRESENT

The LJP site is located 60 miles south of Houston (Figure 3.1). By 1848, when Levi Jordan arrived to establish his plantation, Brazoria County already had a strong plantation economy based on sugar and cotton production (Kelley 2008; Ravage 1997; Barr 1996).

Archaeological work at the LJP encompasses over three decades of work and a number of 47 people and organizations (Figure 3.2). In 2002, the ownership of the plantation was transferred from descendants of Levi Jordan to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD). THC, in accordance with its role as the state of Texas State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), in 2008 began to serve as the administrative agency and steward of the site. Work continues at the site as the THC plans to develop the plantation into a premier public heritage site, disseminating knowledge regarding antebellum and postbellum Texas life (personal communication, Laura DeNormandie, 2017).

48

2012).

Figure 3.1 Map of Texas with location of Levi Jordan Plantation (Kenneth Brown 2012)

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Figure 3.2 Timeline of events at the LJP 50 KENNETH BROWN AND THE UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON EXCAVATIONS

Dr. Brown conducted archaeological excavations at the Levi Jordan Planation from 1986 to 2002. The structures identified through Brown’s excavations are represented in Figure 3.3. Four cabin blocks were discovered on the site that housed enslaved and later tenant, sharecropping and wage-labor farmers. Three of the four blocks housed six individual cabins aligned in two columns, while one block, seen on the map as Block two, housed eight individual cabins aligned in two columns. Block two is believed to be the earliest block of cabins constructed in the quarters area (Figure 3.3). Additionally, a detached kitchen was unearthed through excavations, as well as three cabins believed to house enslaved laborers who worked in the Main House and kitchen. In 1986, the site was privately owned by descendants of the Levi Jordan family, and the land was primarily used for raising cattle. Initially, Brown was interested in comparing “rural and urban ‘lifeways’ from the mid-1800s to the turn of the 20th century in this portion of Texas and the ‘slaveholding South’” (Brown 2012:4). Additionally, Brown’s research assisted the descendants of Levi Jordan who were interested in having the planation put on the National Register of Historic Places (Brown 2012:4).

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Figure 3.3 Map of Structures identified by Kenneth Brown from 1986-2006 (Kenneth Brown 2012)

52 After the first field season in 1986, a large brick scatter that Brown unearthed was of particular interest. Brown was primarily concerned with excavating the homes of enslaved laborers; through conversations with Levi Jordan descendants it was confirmed that the brick scatter in question was what he titled the “Enslaved Quarters.” With this discovery came a shift in research design. With renewed focus, Brown’s research shifted to a longitudinal study of African American lifeways from enslavement through tenancy as seen through the assemblages unearthed in the quarters area. The LJP technical report states that initially Brown’s research goals were: • an examination of the use and meaning of space and the community (from individual cabins through the definition of community membership);

• an examination of the economic structure and functioning of the community (e.g.,

the types and extent of craft specialization and the nature of the internal economy); • the use and meaning of various material items;

• the impact of the gang labor system on the development of beliefs and behaviors practiced by the community’s members; and • the “retention” and modification of African derived beliefs and behaviors.

During the 1980s Brown, following in the tradition of influential plantation archaeologist Charles Fairbanks, was interested in locating “Africanisms” within the archaeological record. Brown believed that the LJP “provided the contexts to test a wide variety of ethnographically based models… much like other Plantation and African

Diaspora archaeological studies that were taking place globally. These models were derived from both West African and New World cultural descriptions” (Brown 2012:5). As archaeologists called for an examination of the social complexities of African American life instead of merely descriptive typologies (e.g., Singleton 1999), Brown, too, began to

53 shift the questions he was asking of the LJP research. His revised questions included the following: • the organization of space within cabins • the role of consumer choice in the patterned selection, production, and/or use of goods and services by members of the community;

• the development of specialized occupations (including economic, medicinal, and religious specializations);

• the development and operation of various statuses and roles related to maintenance and conduct of social and political control within the community; and

• the maintenance and function of Christianity as it was practiced and taught within the community.

Brown excavated at the LJP from 1986 until 2002, unearthing 600,000 artifacts from excavations in association with the Main House and the Quarters. After two decades of work, his research at the site led to the identification of the aforementioned structures, as well as two barns, a cistern, and several stand-alone sheds. In Figure 3.4, excavation units for cabin blocks I-IV are indicated in yellow, blue, pink, green, and purple. Several theses and publications based on this research followed (Cooper 1989; Brown 2001; Wright 1994; Harris 1999; Barns 1999; Gasaway-Hill 1997; Garcia-Herreros 1998; Bruner 1996; Paup 2001; Brown and Cooper 1990; Brown 2004).

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Figure 3.4 Map of excavations at Levi Jordan by Kenneth Brown from 1986-2006 (Brown 2012)

55 EXISTING SCHOLARSHIP ON THE LJP SITE

A great deal of scholarly research has been done regarding the artifact assemblage unearthed at the LJP. Of the master’s theses that were written by Brown’s students, three are of interest to my dissertation research (Wright (1994), Gasaway-Hill (1997), Paup

(2001). Wright’s (1994) master’s thesis was a collection of oral histories from African American decedents of enslaved laborers from the LJP. Although the thesis does not go in- depth regarding clothing and adornment practices, it does provide a look into the quotidian lives of African Americans at the site. Additionally, placing these oral histories in conversation with the work done by Maria Franklin (2012), regarding the descendants of African Americans in relation to the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead, allows for a fruitful comparative analysis between the lives of black landowners and black tenant farmers. Wright’s thesis was also part of a larger project centered on community engagement headed by Brown and Carol McDavid. A website was created and is still maintained by

McDavid that illuminates all aspects of the project, while highlighting the work of Brown and his students. Gasaway-Hill’s (1997) work is of particular interest, as it takes a gendered look at formations of femininity, particularly as it relates to White southern women. My dissertation builds on scholarship like Gasaway-Hill’s by analyzing artifacts from the assemblage through an intersectional lens, specifically looking at the interstices of race, gender, class, and place. Paup’s (2001) thesis examined buttons from six of the cabins in quarters area. Her work aimed to test whether buttons could speak to status among the enslaved as well as “African” influences in choice of button type and decorative style. My research seeks to build off the work of Paup, examining the entire assemblage from seven cabins at the site and looking beyond buttons to other clothing fasteners, jewelry, and hair

56 combs, to analyze the dialectical engagement between racialized and gendered clothing tends and individual choices.

FUTURE PLANS FOR THE LJP

As the acting SHPO for the state of Texas, the THC took stewardship of the LJP in

2008 from the TPWD. The THC’s long-term plans are to transform the plantation into a public heritage site. The artifacts from LJP are now held at the THC curatorial facility in Austin. In 2016, a revised database of the assemblage was created to aid in future research and interpretive planning at the public heritage site. My contribution to this database is in adding the data I gathered regarding diagnostic characteristics of artifacts pertaining to clothing and adornment.

With plans to transform the plantation into a premier public heritage site, where the experience of slavery and freedom in Texas will be discussed and disseminated to the public, in 2010 the THC began a project to stabilize and restore the Main House at the site. During this process, Prewitt and Associates, a Texas based cultural resource management firm, conducted excavations around and underneath the Main House, which still stands. The THC plans to conduct more excavations at the site in the near future, offering opportunities to students around the state to participate in an archaeological field school.

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS AND RESULTS FROM LEVI JORDAN PLANTATION

This section will cover the excavation methodologies employed by Brown during his two decades of research at the Levi Jordan Plantation, specifically focusing on work done in and around the quarters. Brown (2012) stated that, largely due to the land being used for cattle grazing, the methods used to excavate shifted from traditional means of excavation. Brown (2012:12) wrote that:

57 During the first field season, excavation units were located in an attempt to provide a statistically valid sample of the artifacts and features across the area of the “brick scatter.” In order to obtain a statistically valid sample of this large area in a relatively short period of time, the grid was divided into blocks measuring twenty-five feet on a side, including a total of twenty-five standard excavation units. We then selected one of the twenty-five units within each grid “block” to be excavated. Unit number eight was selected for this systematic sampling operation.

Brown implemented 5x5 foot excavation units that were then divided into twenty- five 1x1 foot sub-units (Figure 3.5). Unable to determine discrete soil differences, Brown demarcated arbitrary levels using 2/10 ft. per level. Brown did note, however, that deposits were definable through artifact concentrations. He eventually defined four different levels as “Top soil, Brick Rubble, Abandonment Zone, and Sub-floor Zone” (Brown 2012:14). In addition to 5 ft. sq. excavations units, 1x1 ft. sq. shovel tests were dug to test yard space around the cabin blocks. This methodology was employed to unearth as little open area as possible so as to not endanger cattle that grazed on the land, and in an attempt to provide tightly controlled levels to capture artifact density changes as opposed to soil changes (Brown 2012).

58

Figure3.5 Example of 5x5 foot unit and 1x1 subunits used during Brown's excavations from 1986-2006 (Brown 2012).

59 The fieldwork resulted in the unearthing of 600,000 artifacts from the LJP. Brown

(2012:23) classified artifacts “first by the material the artifact is made of (e.g., ceramics, glass, metal), then by some attribute of that material (e.g., color of glass, type of metal), and finally by the name generally assigned to the object (e.g., button, needle, buckle).”

Brown stated that this classification system illuminated the “behaviors” of people who used the artifact rather than placing a functional categorization that imposes the cultural world view of the archaeologists on the past (Brown 2012: 22-26).

Brown also used ethnographic analogy within his interpretative framework. Citing Binford and Watson, Brown discusses how, due to a lack of archaeological data regarding the lived experiences of African Americans in Texas, he pulled from the Gullah and Geechee communities of the Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia, as well as a number of cultural groups on the continent of Africa, including the Yoruba and Ibo, to interpret data from the LJP. Ethnographic analogy, along with oral history data, documentary sources and material culture analysis, created a holistic project that spanned two decades. Through his excavations, Brown could capture shifts over time in the architectural design of the cabins, as well as shifts in domestic use of space over time. He was able to provide one of the largest archaeological data sets of material culture on African

American life from enslavement through the Reconstruction era in Texas.

CURRENT ANALYSIS OF LJP ARTIFACTS

Brown’s research design aimed to expand the ways in which African American life during enslavement and later through Reconstruction were interpreted from the archaeological record. I admired the questions he posed and the malleability he demonstrated as those questioned shifted when more data - material, documentary, oral, and ethnographic - were gathered. Brown’s work, along with the work of his students,

60 sought to decipher status and roles at the site. My analysis builds on this research by using an intersectional lens. This intersectional analysis asks how Black women from enslavement through emancipation adorned themselves and what negotiations possibility took place between societal conventions of masculinity and femininity and their own individual and group choices. One of the issues I had to address before analyzing artifacts was that of the depositional history of the site. Were the artifacts I selected for my research associated with the antebellum or postbellum era? Perhaps the most significant interpretations regarding site formation processes at the LJP site concern the occupation and abandonment time periods associated with the quarters. Brown and Cooper (1990) propose that the tenant farming households essentially abandoned their cabins largely due to the threat of racial terror brought on by the descendants of the Levi Jordan family (Brown 2012:33). Brown writes about an 1887 court case where Levi Jordan’s grandsons, Royal and McWillie Martin, were charged with two counts of first degree murder of African Americans who lived LJP cabins. Brown believes that this terror, along with a desire by the Martin brothers to shift the use of the plantation - from crop production to training race horses - may have led to Levi’s grandsons essentially needing less labor, and deciding to evict families by locking them out of their houses. Brown states that this process of abandonment would lead to the wealth of material culture found at the site with a termination of occupation set in 1888. Regardless of the reason, abandonment of the quarters appears to have happened circa 1888. The artifact

TPQs shed additional light on this issue. I considered the artifact TPQs for each excavation unit in order to determine whether this might help to better define when the cabins’ occupants disposed of refuse. I surveyed the artifact database for objects that had known TPQs, and these included wire 61 nails, coins, plastic, mid-19th makers marks on glass and ceramic, and aluminum foil

(Figure 3.6 and Table 3.1). Although glass containers would have been ideal for this exercise, the diagnostic traits for dating them were not included in the database. The ceramics were also excluded due to the fact that many of the ware types had long periods of manufacture (e.g., whitewares). Although there were outliers (including some units with artifacts that dated well into the twentieth century), the majority of the excavation units had a TPQ of 1888

(based on wire nails). This TPQ suggest that the artifacts from the cabins, including those associated with clothing and adornment, were deposited after 1888. A closer examination of the clothing and adornment artifacts sets their use firmly in the late nineteenth century, a similar timeframe to the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead.

62

Figure 3.6 TPQs from units analyzed from Cabin Blocks 1 and 2

63

Artifacts Used to Determine Cabin TPQs

Artifacts TPQ Citations

Prosser Button 1841 Pool (1991), Sprague (2002)

Shield Nickle 1869

Barbed Wire 1874 Utility Patent No. 157,124 (Gidden 1874)

Mississippi 1878 Lindsey Bill. Historic Glass Bottle Glass Co. Identification & Information Website (2010) Makers Mark

Wire Nail 1888 Utility Patent No. 377,722 (Stone 1888)

Plastic 1909 (King 1991: 5)

Aluminum foil 1947 Encyclopedia Britannica (1973, vol. 1: 694)

Table 3.1 TPQs of artifacts used to determine date range of LJP cabins

64 Having established a more reliable chronology for the site and its associated artifacts, the next issue I addressed was that of how to classify the artifacts. Since Brown’s artifact classification system differed from that used for the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead, I re-catalogued the artifacts needed for my analysis. The classification system

I use is one similarly used at the RSWF, crafted by Dr. Maria Franklin for her work at the Antioch Colony archaeological site in Buda, Texas (Appendix 3.1). I began my analysis of the LJP artifact assemblage database by surveying the

600,000 artifact entries to find artifacts pertaining to clothing and adornment. I pulled entries for all the buttons, buckles, clothing rivets, hook-and-eyes, beads, jewelry and hair combs from the quarters. Doing this analysis was imperative to my own research goals, as the additional information adds further evidence for comparisons to what is found in documentary records like photographs and newspaper advertisements. I analyzed 2,968 artifacts from the Levi Jordan assemblage. The additional traits that I identified and cataloged included the size and shape of 285 beads, and for buttons

(n=2,405), the button type, color, decoration, and attachment type. I also conducted a more in-depth classification of 196 additional clothing fasteners (buckles, clothing rivets, and hook-and-eyes). Finally, there were 39 pieces of jewelry, and 70 fragments of hair combs that formed part of my dataset.

ARTIFACTS RECOVERED FROM THE LEVI JORDAN PLANTATION CABINS

Focusing specifically on individual cabins, I analyzed material culture recovered from the Cabin Blocks 1 and 2. Although a total of 19 cabins had at least one excavation unit placed in them, for the purposes of my research I examined artifacts from the most extensively excavated cabins: II-B-2, II-B-3, II-B-1, II-A-1, I-A-2, I-A-1, I-B-3 (Table

65 3.2). This helped to ensure that I would have adequate sample sizes of clothing and adornment artifacts.

Cabin Total # of Units Percentage of Total

II-B-2 8 8.79%

II-B-3 8 8.79%

II-B-1 9 9.89%

II-A-1 10 10.99%

I-A-2 15 16.48%

I-A-1 19 20.88%

I-B-3 22 24.18%

Grand Total 91 100%

Table 3.2 Count of Units per cabin excavated at the LJP Quarters and used for analysis.

To provide an in-depth look at the average cabin within the quarters, I provided a profile of cabin I-A-2 based on the alternative classification system I relied on for my analysis mentioned previously (see Appendix xx; Table 3.3). Cabin I-A-2’s assemblage was generally representative of the others selected for my study, and had 10 excavation test pits placed within its now-defunct walls, making it the median number of units within all seven cabins used for my analysis.

66 The artifacts provide a more holistic perspective of the lived experiences of the people who dwelled there. The artifact assemblages from all seven cabins tend to have high counts of faunal remains, and domestic and structural (mainly architectural) material culture (Table 3.3). Cabin I-A-2’s assemblage is composed of 43.54% faunal remains,

23.35% domestic artifacts, and 22.85% structural artifacts (Table 3.4). The high amounts of faunal remains - mammal, avian, and shellfish - are a testament to the food practices of the individuals who lived in the cabin. They would have prepared and cooked their food in hearths located within the structure. The domestic artifacts, also, included beverage containers, food preparation and storage objects, serving and consumption objects, appliances, and furnishings. These artifacts speak even more to foodways, particularly ways in which food was prepared, served, and stored. These artifacts can also speak to what individuals spent money on and placed value in. Structural material found within the cabins speaks to site formation processes at the planation. TPQs for the cabins end around at 1910; which mean that sometime between then and 1930 the Cabin Blocks were removed from the landscape, leaving only brick scatter as evidence of them ever existing. Brown (2012) writes that a 1930 aerial photograph does not show any standing structures where the quarters were once located.

Additionally, Brown found through oral historical testimony from Levi Jordan descendants that the bricks used to construct the cabin blocks were removed to build nearby roads. This might help to explain the high concentration of structural material located in the excavation units.

67 LJP Cabins

Material Type I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Total Count Total %

Ecology 4082 3040 4977 1677 2487 1715 756 18734 38.89%

Metal 2811 2901 3613 1556 3231 2951 1090 18153 37.69%

Glass 894 1400 1810 445 698 869 420 6536 13.57%

Ceramics 610 663 1010 452 658 606 347 4346 9.02%

Lithics 48 49 75 23 43 30 14 282 0.59%

Rubber 31 24 11 10 21 13 6 116 0.24%

Grand Total 8476 8077 11496 4163 7138 6184 2633 48167 100.00%

Table 3.3 Total Number of Artifacts by Material, LJP Quarters

68

Artifact Group Count Percentage of Total

Faunal 2886 43.54%

Domestic 1548 23.35%

Structural 1515 22.85%

Clothing and Adornment 273 4.12%

Tools and Hardware 174 2.62%

Firearms 104 1.57%

Leisure and Play 49 0.74%

Botanical 36 0.54%

Lithics 35 0.53%

Hygiene and Grooming 5 0.08%

Charcoal 3 0.05%

Money 1 0.02%

Grand Total 6629 100.00%

Table 3.4 Profile of cabin I-A-2 in LJP Quarters by functional classification

69 THE RANSOM AND SARAH WILLIAMS FARMSTEAD PROJECT

In addition to artifacts from the LJP Quarters, my analysis included finds recovered from a freedmen’s site roughly 15 miles from Austin. The site differs from the LJP in that it was owned by a family who farmed their own land and raised horses. Although the farmstead was “described as ‘a typical late-19th century farmstead,’” historical documentation revealed that the residents of the farmstead were African Americans who lived in a predominantly white farming community (Lee 2014: 41). Six years after the 1865 emancipation of enslaved Africans in Texas, Ransom Williams purchased the 45-acre farmstead in the Bear Creek community (Figure 3.6). There, Ransom and his wife Sarah lived and labored with their five children for 30 years (Boyd and Norment 2015, Lee 2014). Prewitt and Associates, Inc. (PAI), a Texas-based cultural resource management firm, along with researchers from Preservation Central and the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Anthropology, made up the team that conducted a study of the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead (RSWF) Project (Lee 2014, Franklin 2012, Boyd et al. 2015, 2011). Funded by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDoT), the project consisted of archaeological excavations at the farmstead site, public outreach, an online exhibit through Texas Beyond History which included lesson plans for 4th and 7th grade students, and an oral history component (Boyd et al. 2015).

In 1985, the RSWF was initially recorded by archaeologists from the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Archeological Survey, then part of the Texas Archaeological

Research Laboratory (TARL), as part of a survey along Big Creek (Boyd and Norment

2015:2). In 2003, while surveying property for the potential construction of Texas Highway 45, the Archaeological and Cultural Sciences Group then conducted excavations at the site (Lee 2014: 36). Additional research conducted by PAI and Terri Myers led the researchers

70 to propose that the site was likely eligible for nomination to the National Registrar of

Historic Places.

71

Figure Error! Use the Home tab to apply 0 to the text that you want to appear here..7 Location of the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead. Reproduced from Boyd et al. (2015:2)

72

73 Prewitt and Associates highlighted how conducting further archaeological work at the farmstead would add to the scant history of 19th and early 20th century African American experiences in Texas, while addressing issues of bias within the selection process for the National Register of Historic Places (Barile 2004). Boyd et. al. (2015:639) wrote:

The history of the Williams family and the histories of the nearby freedmen communities are certainly not unique; similar histories probably happened many times in many places. Unfortunately, these types of stories are seldom told... More history has been written about Billy the Kid, an infamous white criminal, than about all of the post-emancipation freedmen communities that ever existed across all of Texas! The scope of the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead project included: “(1) archival research; (2) descendant community outreach and oral history research; (3) archaeological investigations; and (4) public outreach activities” (Lee 2014: 40). The survey and excavation of the site under PAI resulted in 113 shovel tests, 142 1x1 meter excavation units, six 50x50 centimeter units along with 9 backhoe trenches and 3 backhoe scrapes (Boyd et. al 2015:26). Over 26,000 artifacts were recovered from the fieldwork which took place in 2013 (Table 3.5). Of these, I analyzed 440 buttons, 54 other clothing fasteners, 10 fragments of jewelry, and 41 hair comb and hairpin fragments. I chose the RSWF clothing and adornment artifacts to analyze because the assemblage was ideal for comparison with the LJP. The sites are contemporaneous, but differ with respect to the issue of landownership (RSWF) versus non-landownership (LJP). As with the LJP research, previous scholarship on the RSWF site is also relevant to the questions I seek to address.

Nedra Lee examined the kitchen and household artifacts from the RSWF assemblage, interpreting what she called the “performance of a dual class ideology.” Specifically, Lee examined how the artifact assemblage speaks to a particular agrarian

74 ideology that sought wealth through the acquisition of land rather than investment in costly ceramic goods as a display of wealth and status. Additionally, Lee’s research demonstrated that Black landowners, because of racial discrimination, may have sought wealth and social capital beyond agrarian needs. Lee pointed to the evidence of pencils and writing slates at the site, which demonstrated that the Williams’ investment in educating their children was a means of survival through obtaining further social capital (Lee 2014:80-95).

Functional Categories Number Percentages

Kitchen and Household 11,965 45%

Architecture 4586 17%

Unknown – Unidentifiable 4116 15%

Faunal 2875 11%

Activities 945 4%

Lithics 784 3%

Clothing and Adornment 638 2%

Personal 599 2%

Botanical 86 0.30%

Unknown – Possibly Identifiable 86 0.30%

Total 26689 100%

Table 3.5 Functional Classification Categories for RSWF. Reproduced from Lee 2014.

75 REMARKS

I analyzed 2,968 artifacts from seven different cabins in the LJP Quarters and 504 artifacts from the RSWF site. The 3,472 artifacts that make up the material culture data of my analysis include buttons, buckles, hooks and eyes, rivets, beads, jewelry, hair combs and hairpins. My focus for these sites is specifically on clothing and adornment artifacts. These artifacts speak to processes of identity formation among the African American residents who lived and labored on the plantation as enslaved peoples and later tenant farmers.

Clothing and adornment artifacts are material culture used by an individual or group of people to dress their corporal form and alter their appearance in some way, be it the buttons to fasten dress shirts, buckles on shoes, hook-and-eyes to fasten petticoats and chemises, necklaces and rings (Kenmotsu 2000; Franklin 2004; White and Beaudry 2008; Loren 2001). Additionally, I analyzed hair combs and hairpins to address the ways in which altering hair for styling and health are part of daily sartorial practices. Hair and the altering of hair by using hair combs and hair pins was a primary way for black women, who were during the antebellum and postbellum eras, to express themselves (Camp 2000). Although capturing changing hair styles is difficult to do by looking solely at the archaeological record, slave narratives (Camp 2000), historical photographs, and advertisements for haircare products directed towards black women can assist with interpretations. Hair combs and hair pins speak to this practice as a purview into processes of identity formation through hair dress.

In the following chapter, I discuss the results of the analyses of the material culture from the LJP and RSWF sites.

76 Chapter 4: Clothing and Adornment Artifacts

I analyzed approximately 2,759 clothing and adornment artifacts recovered from within seven different cabins at the LJP (Table 4.1). Within this project, clothing and adornment artifacts are defined as material culture used by an individual or group of people to dress their corporal form and alter their appearance. This definition extends beyond clothing and jewelry that lies against the body and includes the use of combs to alter hair. Diana DiPaolo Loren, author of The Archaeology of Clothing and Bodily Adornment in Colonial America, reminds us that the “Body and dress are inseparable” (2001: 175). This grouping of artifacts under the classification of clothing and adornment is in alignment with other archaeological scholarship, like Carolyn White’s and Mary Beaudry’s (2008) work, which provides an overview of what constitutes clothing and adornment artifacts recovered at archaeological sites and their varied uses. The artifact types I examine and discuss in this chapter include buttons to fasten dress shirts, hook-and-eyes to fasten petticoats and chemises, necklaces and rings to wear decoratively against the body, and combs used to alter and style hair. The above-mentioned artifact types align with clothing and adornment classifications used in the work of Nancy Kenmotsu et al. (2000) at the Dallas, TX Freedman Cemetery, as well as Maria Franklin (2004), who discusses clothing and adornment artifacts at the Rich Neck Slave Quarters in Colonial Williamsburg.

This project centers on the everyday elements of dress at the LJP; however fancier elements of dress – often captured in historic 19th and 20th-century portraiture and photography – are also discussed here. By centering common elements of dress, I am interested in sartorial practices shaped by everyday tasks engaged in by African American tenant farmers, wage laborers, and sharecroppers – those who lived and labored at the LJP. By this, I am interested in what people wore while they labored in fields tilling and hoeing

77 land, gathered water and wood, swept yards, laundered clothing, and cooked over hearths located in poorly ventilated one-room cabins. For this project, I am interested in elucidating gendered sartorial practices of self- making among African American women in Texas from 1865 through 1910. In this chapter, I discuss in detail the clothing and adornment artifacts recovered from within the LJP quarters cabins. A total of 2,759 artifacts recovered from the LJP are analyzed in the chapter (Table 4.1). The artifact group analyzed below is comprised of clothing fasteners, combs, hairpins and jewelry fragments. I open this chapter with an examination of clothing and adornment data recovered from the LJP. From there I shift focus to specific artifact types at the LJP, examining clothing fasteners, combs, hairpins, and jewelry. Later I examine both the LJP cabins and the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead to offer a look at the material residue of sartorial practices among African American tenant farmers, wage laborers, and sharecroppers – those who lived and labored at the LJP – as well as African American land- owners Ransom and Sarah Williams.

78 Clothing Fastener Comb Hairpin Jewelry LJP Cabins Total Count Total Percentage Count % Count % Count % Count %

II-B-1 590 21.38% 15 0.54% 0.00% 76 2.75% 681 24.68%

II-B-2 396 14.35% 7 0.25% 1 0.04% 27 0.98% 431 15.62%

I-B-3 364 13.19% 7 0.25% 0.00% 38 1.38% 409 14.82%

I-A-1 281 10.18% 20 0.72% 0.00% 41 1.49% 342 12.40%

II-B-3 299 10.84% 3 0.11% 0.00% 35 1.27% 337 12.21%

I-A-2 209 7.58% 5 0.18% 0.00% 76 2.75% 290 10.51%

II-A-1 245 8.88% 6 0.22% 0.00% 18 0.65% 269 9.75%

Grand Total 2384 86.41% 63 2.28% 1 0.04% 311 11.27% 2759 100.00%

Table 4.1 Artefactual data recovered from within the architectural bounds of the seven LJP cabins used for this project

79 CLOTHING FASTENERS FROM LJP

There were 2,383 clothing fasteners recovered from seven cabins at the LJP (Table 4.2). The artifact types that comprise this artifact group were shoe buckles, hook-and-eyes, suspenders, rivets, clothing buckles, and buttons. Coat, jacket, vest, and belt buckles were grouped under the classification of clothing buckles. Buttons included common sew-thru and shank style attachments, along with buttons that were attached through insertion, such as studs. Outside of rubber Goodyear (date range 1851 to 1870) and Prosser buttons (TPQ

1841), unit TPQs where all other artifacts were unearthed range from 1890 to 1910 (Pool 1991; Sprague 2002) (see Figure 3.6 in Chapter 3 for unit TPQs). Buttons comprised 93.58% of clothing fasteners unearthed from cabins at the LJP.

Buttons were the most common clothing fastener before the invention of the zipper in 1893. In addition to metal, Prosser, glass, and rubber buttons that survived in the archaeological record, there is also evidence of shoe buckles, suspender buckles, hook-and-eyes, and grommets. The acquisition of clothing fasteners by African Americans at the LJP speaks to gendered and aged sartorial practices specifically through examinations of what clothes men, women, and children were wearing. Additionally, this artifact group speaks to market accessibility and practices of consumerism through examinations of what people had access to and the multivariate reasons for why people purchased certain clothing fasteners. Archaeologists have spoken to the problematic nature of interpreting gender from clothing fasteners (Lindbergh 1999; Beaudry et. al. 1991). After all, both men, women, children, and the elderly fastened shoes and clothing with buckles and used buttons to fasten a variety of garments. However, research on historic photographs (Brubacher 2002; Hunt and Sibley 1994; Hunt 1994; Foster 1997) and mortuary archaeology (Owens 2000; Davidson 2008; McCarthy 1997; Armstrong and Fleishman 2003; Blakey 2001) have been

80 able to classify artifacts as resonating with masculine or feminine clothing during the 19th and 20th centuries – a period marked by gender roles that played out in how people dressed (Tortora and Eubank 2010, Brubacher 2004; Hunt 1994; Heath 2004; Galle 2004; White and White 1995).

For example, more masculine items of clothing used suspenders (Figure 4.1) and rivets to fasten trousers; while hook-and-eyes were used for traditional feminine clothing, fastening bodices and petticoats. These three clothing fastener types – suspenders, rivets, and hook-and-eyes – typically do not make up a substantial number of artifacts in assemblages from historic sites. These three artifact types combined make up only 1.47% of the clothing fasteners recovered at the LJP. However, they do provide a window into the complex desires African Americans expressed through dress, which aligned and diverged with gender norms as well as religious ideology surrounding ideas of modesty at that time, while interlacing with varying forms of racial and gendered subjugation that the wearers faced. I discuss this in more detail in the following chapter.

81

Figure 4.1 Floral Patterned Brass Suspender Buckle. Cabin II-A-1, Lot # 201717, Unit 990E/1080N, Level 8, Subunit 1

82 Clothing I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Total Total Fastener Count % Type Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count %

Button 269 11.29% 195 8.18% 339 14.23% 232 9.74% 549 23.04% 365 15.32% 281 11.79% 2230 93.58%

Clothing Buckle 4 0.17% 9 0.38% 15 0.63% 6 0.25% 21 0.88% 20 0.84% 9 0.38% 84 3.52%

Rivet 3 0.13% 2 0.08% 5 0.21% 2 0.08% 10 0.42% 4 0.17% 5 0.21% 31 1.30%

Suspender 1 0.04% 1 0.04% 4 0.17% 5 0.21% 6 0.25% 2 0.08% 3 0.13% 22 0.92%

Hook and Eye 1 0.04% 2 0.08% 1 0.04% 0.00% 4 0.17% 5 0.21% 0.00% 13 0.55%

Shoe Buckle 3 0.13% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 3 0.13%

Grand Total 281 11.79% 209 8.77% 364 15.27% 245 10.28% 590 24.76% 396 16.62% 298 12.51% 2383 100.00%

Table 4.2 All clothing fasteners recovered from the LJP Quarters used in this project

83 Buttons at the LJP

I analyzed 2,230 buttons recovered from the quarters at LJP (Table 4.3). Sprague (2002), Hinks (1995), Pool (1986) and Peacock (1973) provide detailed typologies and functional analyses for a variety of buttons; specifically, these authors examine cost and manufacturing techniques for different button types. A variety of buttons were recovered from the LJP cabins that varied in material composition, attachment style, size, and decoration (Figure 4.2). Pool (1986) highlights the durability of buttons within the archaeological record. Pool points out that while horn, wood, and vegetable ivory buttons were relatively inexpensive, due to their organic nature they are not found in the archaeological record. As a result, even though these were easily accessible, if they were used at LJP, no traces of them were found.

84

Figure 4.2 Illustration of Button Types recovered at the LJP. A: two-hole fisheye; B: four-hole, piecrust; C: four-hole, gingham decorative; D: four-hole, calico decorative; E: one-hole bone button; F: Victorian Jewel, left: top view, right: profile view; G: four-hole, dish, Prosser button; H: Glass, lampwork button with loop-shank; I: two-hole panty waist button. Illustration created by the author.

85 I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Material Type Total Count Total % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count %

RUBBER 2 0.09% 0.00% 1 0.04% 2 0.09% 3 0.13% 6 0.27% 3 0.13% 17 0.76%

METAL 53 2.33% 29 1.30% 55 2.47% 24 1.08% 82 3.68% 58 2.60% 39 1.75% 340 15.21%

GLASS 28 1.26% 11 0.49% 8 0.36% 6 0.27% 27 1.21% 13 0.58% 9 0.40% 102 4.58%

ECOLOGY 76 3.41% 53 2.38% 114 5.11% 87 3.90% 147 6.59% 88 3.95% 69 3.10% 634 28.44%

CERAMICS 110 4.93% 102 4.58% 160 7.18% 113 5.07% 291 13.06% 200 8.97% 161 7.22% 1137 51.01%

Grand Total 268 12.02% 195 8.75% 338 15.16% 232 10.41% 550 24.67% 365 16.38% 281 12.61% 2230 100.00%

Table 4.3 Total number of buttons unearthed from seven cabins at LJP by material type

86 Additionally, after the patenting of Prosser buttons by Richard Prosser in 1841, ordinary dish ceramic buttons were mass produced. The mass production of Prosser buttons resulted in this button type becoming inexpensive to consumers. Of the 2,230 buttons used for this research, 1,102 had a discernable button type, other than plain two to five hole buttons and unidentifiable buttons (which could not be classified due to either their fragmented nature or, in the case of metal buttons, rust and deterioration). Pool’s 1991 button typology was used to classify button type, attachment type, and decorative style in this research.

Prosser Buttons

Of the 2,230 buttons unearthed within the seven domestic structures used for this research, just over 50% were Prosser buttons (Figure 4.3). As stated above Prosser buttons are named after inventor Richard Prosser, who patented the manufacturing technique of the buttons in England in 1840. The TPQ date used in this research, 1841, is taken from the patent that Thomas Prosser, Richard’s brother, filed for in New Jersey during that year

(Sprague 2002; Pool 1991). Sprague (2002) outlines the process involved in manufacturing Prosser buttons as well as improvements made to the process from other inventors during the mid and late 19th century. Sprague, whose research pulled together sources from button collectors, stated that “the Prosser process of button manufacture involved the preparation of fine clay with the addition of quartz or finely ground ceramic wasters, a small amount of moisture, and then pressing this mixture into cast-iron molds” (2002: 111-112). These cast-iron molds came in a variety of styles, including dish, inkwell, hobnob, tire, fish-eye, and piecrust to name a few (See Figure 4.2 for illustrations of button types found at LJP). By 1896 consumers could get 12 dozen Prosser buttons for 10 cents (Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1896).

87

Figure 4.3 Prosser utilitarian buttons. Button type from left to right: dish, dish, tire, pie crust. Lot 00405, Unit 1010E 1095N, Level 4.

By 1849, in addition to white Prosser buttons, consumers also had access to pink, ochre, blue, and black Prosser buttons as well as more highly decorative styles such as calico and gingham designs. Pool (1991) discusses calico buttons as being created to mirror the fabric they were named after. Calico decorative styles (See Figure 4.3D) are distinguishable by the tiny repetitive patterns that appear on the buttons, which come in a variety of different colors (Sprague 2002; Lamm et al. 1970; Pool 1991). The process for making this decorative style was the same transfer-print process used to create transfer- print ceramic serving wares. Gingham decorative styles - crossbar and plaid designs - on the other hand, required a different process. Sprague outlines the process, stating that “the area to be colored must be covered with a sticky medium and the color must then be sifted over in powdered form. When more than one color is employed, each one must be separately fired” (2002:116). Due to this more complicated process, the cost of gingham designed buttons was higher. Forty calico and gingham decorative style Prosser buttons were recovered from the LJP Quarters.

88 Metal Buttons

Pool (1991) provides a detailed history regarding the introduction, construction, and use of metal buttons. Early solid metal buttons were made of brass and tin, with common 4-hole metal buttons being used as fly and suspender attachments (Pool 1991:2).

Metal buttons made up 15.23% of the total buttons unearthed at the LJP. Metal buttons were used for more utilitarian work clothing and often accompanied more masculine clothing types (Pool 1991; Lindbergh 1999). The three-part metal button was patented in 1823 by Benjamin Sanders, and is commonly referred to as a “gaiter button.” These are distinguishable by their domed face, often with designs or insignias stamped on them. There were eighteen Union soldier buttons and one Confederate soldier button recovered from the LJP quarters excavation. Many Texas WPA narratives capture African

American memories of Union solider’s brass uniform buttons. Campbell Davis, an ex- enslaved African American man who lived and labored in Texas, recalled the sight stating “I seed soldiers on horses coming and goin' down de big road, and lots of dem come to Port

Caddo in boats, De pretties’ sight I ever seed am a soldier band all dress in de uniforms with brass buttons” (Davis 1932: 287). 19th and early 20th-century military buttons were 3-part or 4-part gaiter buttons. Union soldiers during the 19th century wore gaiter buttons with domes stamped with an eagle design that had a shield covering the eagle’s breast

(Figure 4.4) (Albert 1969). Designations for infantry, artillery and cavalry were demarcated with the letters ‘I,’ ‘A,’ and ‘C,’ which were stamped in the center of the shields (Albert

1969). Confederate buttons carried a similar eagle design for general service; however, designations for infantry, artillery, and cavalry were demarcated with just the letters and not the eagle design (Albert 1969).

89

Figure 4.4 Image of General Service Union button recovered from the LJP. Lot: 06327, Unit: 925E/983N, Level 3. Image taken by author.

Buttons Made From Organic Materials

Shell and bone buttons have a material classification of ecology for this project. Bone buttons were created through a process of boiling animal bone to clean and soften it. Once softened the bone was sawed open, the marrow was removed, and the bone was flattened (Pool 1991). From the flattened material, blanks were cut and decorated. According to Pool (1991), most bone buttons were plain and used to fasten undergarments.

This fact is also supported by advertising in Sear and Roebuck, Co. which, in 1896, listed

12 dozen plain bone buttons for 25 cents, stating they were used for fastening underwear. There were 450 bone buttons recovered from the LJP quarters, with most of them being utilitarian 4-hole buttons.

90 There were 229 shell buttons recovered from the LJP cabins. The classification of shell buttons for this project encompasses buttons cut from ocean and freshwater shells. Ocean shell buttons are commonly referred to as “pearl buttons” during the late 19th century. The term “pearl buttons” was used by Sears, Roebuck, Co., and Montgomery

Wade and Co., and by button collectors, who provide a wealth of information regarding decorative techniques (Figure 4.5) (Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1986; Pool 1991). The primary difference between pearl and common shell buttons are the iridescent finish on pearl buttons. Pool details the tedious process involved in manufacturing shell buttons, stating that “the fragile nature of shell required extensive hand labor. The backs were cut with a tubal saw and then split into layers…the blanks were then sorted, cleaned, and decorated. Small grooves in geometric patterns were cut into the surface of the button by hand” (Pool

1991: 8). The amount of labor that went into the creation of shell buttons is seen in the cost difference; in 1896 Sears catalogs listed a dozen of the smallest pearl buttons for 25 cents, as opposed to 12 dozen bone buttons for that cost.

91

Figure 4.5 Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1895 catalogue listing of “Pearl Shirt Buttons” with different decorative designs.

Glass Buttons

The National Button Society has published several materials on the production and classification of glass buttons for the interest of button collectors. These sources have become a great value to archaeologists (Pool 1991; Sprague 2002). Basic manufacturing techniques to produce glass buttons have remained the same from the 16th through the 19th centuries, with buttons produced as either mold blown (Figure 4.6) or hand-blown (Pool 1991). Like other glass products of the 19th century, different alloys could be added during the manufacturing processes to obtain a variety of different glass colors (Pool 1991). Once cooled, many different finishes could be added to provide varying decorative styles. Of the total buttons analyzed for this study, 104 glass buttons were recovered from the LJP cabins. Fancier feminine clothing button types included “Victorian jewel” (See Figure 4.3F) button types that contained a metal rim base with a glass inlet and a loop-shank attachment (Pool 1991:3). There were ten Victorian jewel buttons recovered from the LJP.

92

Figure 4.6 Image of two molded glass buttons with loop-shank attachments recovered from the LJP. Right: Lot 04594, Unit 1025E 1095N, Level 8. Left: Lot 04592, Unit 1025E 1095N, Level 8. Image taken by Author

Rubber Buttons

Hard rubber buttons were the first synthetic buttons to enter the button industry (Pool 1991). Charles Goodyear, of Novelty Rubber Co., patented the process known as vulcanization that led to the creation of hard rubber buttons (Pool 1991). In 1851 Charles’s son, Nelson Goodyear, improved the process, with the patent expiring in 1870. There were 17 rubber buttons recovered from the LJP, with ten of those buttons exhibiting the

Goodyear manufacturer’s makers mark on the back, giving them a TPQ of 1851. The nature 93 of these buttons made them durable and excellent for fastening masculine work clothing.

The manufacturing process also lead to a great deal of decorative variation in hard rubber buttons; Pool states that “the greatest variety of buttons were made by the Novelty Rubber Company and included pictorial, political buttons, and military buttons” (1991:9).

Cloth-Covered Buttons

Cloth-covered buttons, according to Pool (1991), were more expensive. However, textile coverings for cloth buttons are not found within the archaeological record, and as such, what little evidence there may be of use comes from one-hole bone buttons, plain 3- piece metal gaiter buttons, and domed glass buttons, often with metal loop shanks (Pool 1991; Lindbergh 1999). Of the 634 buttons unearthed at LJP with a material type designated ecology, 25 were one-hole bone buttons that would have had loop-shank attachments. These buttons could have possibly been used as the base for more expensive cloth-covered buttons. Of the 340 metal buttons, 71 were gaiter type buttons, and of the 104 glass buttons unearthed, 47 were gaiter type that also could have been more expensive fabric-covered buttons.

Button Variation and Difficulties Determining the Gender of the Wearer

The variety in button types at the LJP highlights how, at the turn of the 20th- century, people living in the LJP quarters had the means to purchase expensive and inexpensive buttons if they so chose. This could be evidence of them placing value in dress and the presentation of themselves, despite a period marked by financial hardship for most

African American farmers. In addition to this evidence suggesting involvement in consumer culture at the turn of the 20th century, there is also evidence that Black residents at the LJP manufactured and altered buttons on site. Paup (2001) discusses, in more depth,

94 manufacture of carved shell and glass buttons on site as evidence of African retentions. In addition to this interpretation, it could be that altered buttons at the site are evidence of the complex negotiations residents had with social trends of dress and self-expression. I speak more about this in the following chapter. Additionally, it should also be noted that many of the designs Paup discusses that were carved into shell buttons could also be purchased ready-made, as carved shell buttons and five point star glass buttons were popular throughout the mid-to-late 19th century (Carnevali 2011: 308).

As mentioned above, 50.94% of all buttons found within the examined cabins were utilitarian Prosser buttons. These buttons often proved more durable than the clothing they were attached to, which needed to endure the labor Black men and women completed daily. Pants ripped while tilling the land and petticoats tore while picking cotton, and as such buttons were removed and repurposed. Health (1996) and Lindbergh (1999) note how non- matching button types could have been used on a single garment. This fact is further evidenced by interment photographs and excavations of burial sites, like at the Dallas

Freedman cemetery (Owens 2000). Owens’ work discusses how clothing placed on the interred was often fastened with a variety of mismatching buttons. Ambiguities arise when attempting to interpret gender through button types. Two- hole pantywaist buttons were used to fasten both masculine and feminine undergarments. Moreover, decorative buttons could have been used to fasten high collar blouses for women and vests for men. Studs ordinarily thought of as a masculine button type were fashionable as women’s collar studs in the 19th and 20th century (Lindbergh 1999). Lindbergh (1999:6) also writes of how fancier button types, like glass 2-piece lampwork buttons (See Figure 4.3H), may be interpreted as feminine clothing used as fasteners for dresses; however, they were popular as “Fancy Vest” buttons among men in the nineteenth century. Additionally, because of their low cost, they were market accessible to African Americans at the LJP. 95 Button Size and Correlations to Clothing Type

There are no definitive answers regarding the gender of those who wore fancier glass molded buttons and Prosser buttons. However, what archaeologists can surmise is the type of clothing associated with button size. Button sizes are measured in “ligens,” derived from the French ligens system where 40’ ligens equal 25mm (1 inch). Lindbergh (1991), along with late 19th century Sears, Roebuck, and Co. catalogs, outline button sizes as they relate to clothing type (Table 4.4). Of the buttons analyzed for this project, 2038 were measurable samples (Table 4.5). Of these, the majority of them, 87.29%, were small and likely attached to undergarments, shirts, and waistcoats. Of the total measuresuable buttons, 8.10% were diminutive, possibly signifying clothing for children or dolls (Lindbergh 1999). A relatively small amount of medium and large buttons were found at the site, 3.97% and 0.05% respectively. The relatively low number of large buttons could be the result of a lessened need for jackets or coats as a result of the weather along the south-east coast of Texas. It may also be a result of the cost of coats, jackets, and vests and the desire to spend money on other things. It should be highlighted that even though there was a relatively low number of diminutive buttons in the LJP cabins, this artifact does serve as a way of locating children in the archaeological record outside of toy and doll related artifacts (Lindbergh 1999).

96 Diameter mm Linges Associated Clothing

Diminutive Less than 9.52 Less than 15 Shirt and Dress

Small 9.525-19.05 15 to 30 

Medium 19.05-25.4 30 to 40 

Large Greater than 25.4 Over 40 Vest, Coat, and Jacket

Table 4.4 Table outlining button measurements and corresponding size classifications as they relate to clothing type. Peacock (1973); (Lindbergh 1999); (Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1896)

97 I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Total Total Size Co Co Co Co Co Co Co Count % % % % % % % % unt unt unt unt unt unt unt

10.0 7.56 13.2 8.73 22.8 13.8 11.0 87.29 Small 204 154 270 178 465 283 225 1779 1% % 5% % 2% 9% 4% %

Diminut 0.54 0.54 1.23 1.03 1.52 1.91 1.32 8.10 11 11 25 21 31 39 27 165 ive % % % % % % % %

0.79 0.29 0.49 0.29 0.79 0.69 0.64 3.97 Medium 16 6 10 6 16 14 13 81 % % % % % % % %

0.15 0.00 0.00 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.05 0.64 Large 3 2 3 4 1 13 % % % % % % % %

Grand 11.4 8.39 14.9 10.1 25.2 16.6 13.0 100.0 234 171 305 207 515 340 266 2038 Total 8% % 7% 6% 7% 8% 5% 0%

Table 4.5 Table outlining button measurements and corresponding size classifications at the LJP

98 Patterns in Button Colors and Attachment Styles

Of the buttons analyzed at the LJP, 232 had distinctive colors to them (Table 4.6). As mentioned above, there were a variety of techniques based on the material type that could result in buttons having a variety of colors. Colored buttons recovered from the LJP and analyzed for this research were either Prosser or glass buttons. Colored buttons came in many types, including dish, 2-piece molded glass (Figure 4.7), china-mound, pudding mold, as well as inkwell (Figure 4.8). Button samples came in a variety of attachment styles including sew-through, loop shanks, and self-shank types. The variety of colored buttons with different attachment styles suggest that these buttons were both for fancier pieces of clothing, in the case of more delicate shank styles, and utilitarian, for everyday use. Black, red, green and blue buttons were unearthed in higher quantities than any other color representing 27.16%, 24.57%, 15.09% and 15.09% respectively.

Historically, black buttons (see Figure 4.8) were used to fasten and decorate mourning clothing for both African Americans and White Americans (Stine et al. 1996; Lindbergh 1999). Lindbergh (1999) writes that there were distinct periods and seasons for a preference in black glass buttons (Lindbergh 1999:55). Every cabin examined at the LJP contained black buttons. These decorative choices provide one way African American men and women could choose to personalize their clothing and their presentation of self.

99

Figure 4.7 Black molded 2-hole button unearthed at LJP. Lot 00781, Unit 1020E/ 1100N, Level 4.

100

Figure 4.8 Red rim inkwell, 4-hole Prosser button recovered from LJP. Lot07338, Unit 920E/985 N, Level 7.

101 I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Button Total Total % Color Coun Coun Coun Coun Coun Coun Coun Count % % % % % % % t t t t t t t 2.59 3.02 Black 12 5.17% 6 7 6 2.59% 17 7.33% 8 3.45% 7 3.02% 63 27.16% % % 1.29 1.72 Red 13 5.60% 3 4 6 2.59% 8 3.45% 15 6.47% 8 3.45% 57 24.57% % % 3.02 2.16 Blue 3 1.29% 7 5 4 1.72% 10 4.31% 3 1.29% 3 1.29% 35 15.09% % % 0.00 0.43 Green 1 0.43% 1 2 0.86% 11 4.74% 5 2.16% 15 6.47% 35 15.09% % % 0.00 0.00 Brown 1 0.43% 0.00% 7 3.02% 2 0.86% 1 0.43% 11 4.74% % % 0.43 0.00 multi-color 5 2.16% 1 1 0.43% 2 0.86% 0.00% 0.00% 9 3.88% % % 0.00 0.00 Yellow 1 0.43% 0.00% 1 0.43% 1 0.43% 2 0.86% 5 2.16% % % 0.00 0.00 Maroon 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 3 1.29% 1 0.43% 4 1.72% % % 0.43 0.00 Orange 0.00% 1 1 0.43% 2 0.86% 0.00% 0.00% 4 1.72% % % 0.00 0.00 Amber 1 0.43% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.43% 2 0.86% % % 0.00 0.00 Gray 0.00% 2 0.86% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2 0.86% % % 0.43 0.43 pink 0.00% 1 1 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2 0.86% % % 0.00 0.00 Purple 0.00% 2 0.86% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2 0.86% % % 0.00 0.00 Gold 0.00% 1 0.43% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.43% % % Grand 15.95 8.19 7.76 10.78 25.00 15.95 16.38 100.00 37 19 18 25 58 37 38 232 Total % % % % % % % %

Table 4.6 Table outlining button color by cabin at the LJP 102 HOOK-AND-EYE CLOSURES

James Davidson’s (2015) examination of previous interpretations of decorative hook-and-eye fasteners known as “hand charms” or “fist charms” at African American sites of enslavement provides the most comprehensive archaeological work on the manufacture and use of these fasteners. Davidson points out that although little research has been conducted on the closures, they do have some “antiquity,” with early examples of the closures found in the Middle Ages along with examples found at early European sites in the Americas (2015: 44). Patents taken out in the United States and the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century point to “two basic forms of hooks and eyes: round wire varieties and ‘flat’ versions, i.e., round wire that had been rolled flat by machinery” (Davidson 2015:

44; U.S. Utility Patent No. 2,978 [Burke 1847:352] and U.K. Utility Patent No. 8670 [Lack 1876:66]). Before 1830, hook-and-eye closures were relatively expensive; however, a series of patents made throughout the mid and late 19th century made improvements to the hook- and-eye design (Davidson 2015). It was Frank E. DeLong’s 1889 patent that created a more “commercially successful” design requiring less skilled labor and greater production batches; as a result, hook-and-eye closures became more accessible to consumers

(Davidson 2015; U.S. Utility Patent No. 411,857 [DeLong 1889]). Women – rich and poor, Black and White – fastened their garments with hook-and-eye closures (Figure 4.9). Hook- and-eyes are not typically unearthed in high quantities at historic sites due to their small size, as well as the fact that they often deteriorate or, if they survived, are missed during screening processes. As it relates to this research project, this artifact type speaks to clothing trends of the late 19th and 20th century. Hook-and-eye closures are typically interpreted as fasteners for feminine clothing such as short and long gowns, bodices,

103 petticoats, and early corset clasps (White 2005; White and White 1995; Lindbergh 1999;

Hunt and Sibley 1994; Davidson 2015). Of the total clothing fasteners recovered for this research, 11 hook-and-eye closures were found in the LJP cabins (Table 4.7). Hook-and- eye fasteners were found in only five out of the seven cabins.

Figure 4.9 Advertisement for “Hooks and Eyes” from the 1896 Sears and Roebuck Spring Catalog

104 Clothing I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-B-1 II-B-2 Total Fastener Total % Coun Coun Coun Coun Coun Count Type % % % % % t t t t t

Hook 1 9.09% 1 9.09% 1 9.09% 3 27.27% 3 27.27% 9 81.82%

Eye 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2 18.18% 2 18.18%

Grand 9.09 9.09 9.09 27.27 45.45 100.00 1 1 1 3 5 11 Total % % % % % %

Table 4.7 Table outlining frequency of hook and eye fasteners by cabin at the LJP

105 JEWELRY

Jewelry artifacts are often recovered in less frequency at archaeological sites (White 2005; Blakey 2001; Davidson 2015). It is rare to find whole pendants, a matching set of earrings, or a complete, strung necklace. This is due to a variety of reasons, including that these artifacts cost a significant amount of money and were of high value to the wearer, and as such were not often discarded. What is often found at historical sites are individual beads, fragments of brooches and pendants, along with pieces of chain that may have once held a pocket watch or perfume bottle to a woman’s bodice. Mortuary archaeology has provided a wealth of data on how African Americans and enslaved Africans of the past dressed and adorned themselves (Davidson 2015; Blakey

2001; Bianco et. al. 2006; McCarthy 1997; Armstrong and Fleishman 2003; Owens 2000). Interment photos, as well as images captured on daguerreotypes and stereoscopes, feature both black and white and sepia tone depictions of African Americans wearing a variety of jewelry types. These included African Americans both enslaved and free during the antebellum era, landowners and tenant farmers during the postbellum era, as well as people living in both rural and urban landscapes. The first and second industrial revolutions brought with them many new inventions that shifted the way jewelry was manufactured and allowed new avenues for a wider consumer base. In 1875 the cost of jewelry varied, from a “Gents’ 14 k. Gold Filled Case Watch” costing $25 to a set of “Plain Jet Bracelets” costing 50 cents (Montgomery Ward and Co. 1875: 48). By the mid 19th-century gemstone, glass, and paste inlets for rings, pendants, and decorative pins, as well as chains, were being produced at greater speeds with machinery that required less skilled laborers, making them more cost-effective to make and widely accessible to consumers (Carnevali 2011:295-297).

106 Of the total artifacts analyzed for this project, 392 artifacts were classified under the artifact group “jewelry” (Table 4.8). Artifacts classified as jewelry recovered from the LJP were wire, pendants, brooches (Figure 4.10), earrings, chains, watch fragments, and various bead types. This artifact group accounted for 9.91% of total artifacts related to clothing and adornment examined. Cylindrical, tubular, seed and spherical beads are the most proliferated jewelry type unearthed at the LJP, making up a combined 78.32% of the total count of jewelry artifacts. Beads from the site are mainly comprised of glass or ceramic, and as such lend themselves to less deterioration once discarded than the metal artifacts such as wire, pendants, earrings, chain, rings, watch fragments, and brooches. For example, Figure 4.11 is a brooch unearthed in Cabin I-A-2 made of metal and found fragmented within the archeological record.

107

Figure 4.10 Five pendant fragments found in enslaved cabins at LJP. Lot 17649, Unit 915E 995N, Cabin I-A-2.

108 I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Total Jewelry Total Coun Type % Coun Coun Coun Coun Coun Coun t % % % % % % Count % t t t t t t

Spherical 25 6.38% 28 7.14% 35 8.93% 9 2.30% 44 11.22% 13 3.32% 20 5.10% 174 44.39% Bead

Seed Bead 22 5.61% 4 1.02% 2 0.51% 0.00% 26 6.63% 8 2.04% 8 2.04% 70 17.86%

Tubular 4 1.02% 43 10.97% 2 0.51% 3 0.77% 5 1.28% 2 0.51% 4 1.02% 63 16.07% Bead Cylindrica l 5 1.28% 9 2.30% 2 0.51% 1 0.26% 8 2.04% 4 1.02% 2 0.51% 31 7.91% Bead

Brooch 1 0.26% 10 2.55% 0.00% 2 0.51% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.26% 14 3.57%

Watch 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 13 3.32% 0.00% 13 3.32%

Ring 5 1.28% 3 0.77% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.26% 9 2.30%

Chain 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 2 0.51% 0.00% 1 0.26% 5 1.28% 8 2.04%

Earring 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 4 1.02% 0.00% 1 0.26% 5 1.28%

Pendant 2 0.51% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.26% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.26% 4 1.02%

Wire 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.26% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.26%

Grand 16.33 24.74 10.46 4.59 22.45 100.00 64 97 41 18 88 41 10.46% 43 10.97% 392 Total % % % % % %

Table 4.8 Artefactual data classified as jewelry by cabin at the LJP

109 Most archaeological work interpreting jewelry from assemblages recovered from

African Diasporic sites in the Americas that date to the antebellum era center on notions of Africanisms or ritualistic objects (Ascher and Fairbanks 1971; Ferguson 1980, 1999; Yong 1996; Russell 1997; Fennell 2003; Brown 2002). Other scholarly works stray away from attempting to locate ethnic markers and instead examine adornment practices and the acquisition of such goods as acts of agency (Mullins 1999, 2001; Heath 1999). This project works to expand on the latter research, conceiving of other multivalent meanings attached to these artifacts such as processes of socialization, market accessibility, and the desire for portable assets. Outside of the beads recovered from the LJP site, 218 jewelry fragments were unearthed from six of the seven cabins excavated. All but cabin I-B-3 had non-bead related jewelry artifacts recovered from test units. Listed in order of their frequency, brooch fragments, watch fragments, rings, chain, an earring, pendant fragments and wire were recovered from excavation units at the LJP.

Wire and Chain

Providence, Rhode Island during the 19th century became the premier site for the production of jewelry in the U.S. (Carnevali 2011). Francesca Carnevali’s (2011) work provides a business history of the jewelry industry of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Through an examination of the creative tactics jewelers used to match and anticipate the desires of consumers in a capitalist economy, Carnevali provides a detailed history on the production of a range of jewelry components including wire and chain. In 1857 George

Haseltine patented a machine that was “a new and improved machine for punching and shaping metals,” which created several jewelry components including chains (Carnevali 2011: 308; Utility Patent No. 17,876 [Haseltine 1857]). Two years later in 1859, improving on his design, Haseltine patented a machine that made snake chain (Carnevali 2011).

110 Additionally, in 1859 James Lancellot, a jeweler in South Providence, Rhode Island, patented improvements in ornamental chain making (Rhode Island Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry 1867: 58; Carnevali 2011: 308). Such inventions “allowed manufacturers to substitute machinery for skills,” which led to less labor- intensive manufacturing methods. A result was the production of less expensive chain and wire jewelry components (Carnevali 2011). It is difficult to unearth completed jewelry that may have used chain and wire components in the archaeological record. White (2008) discusses the possibility of chain belonging to a chatelaine, which was a “waist-hung appendage” with tools attached to it such as sewing tools, keys, or perfume bottles, which would have then attached to a woman’s gowns (White 2008:31). Chain in cabin II-B-2 was likely attached to a pocket watch. A cross pendant with red glass inlets unearthed in cabin I-A-1 had a complete chain attached with a closed clasp. This artifact was counted as a pendant in Table 4.7.

Pendants and brooches

The 19th century brought with it “power presses, automatic drops, wire-bending, button, watch, and locket case–making machines, hydraulic-rocking and stamp presses,” all of which made the production of jewelry much more accessible to working class and rural Americans (Carnevali 2011). Jewelry that once took skilled jewelers hours to custom- make for one customer could now be made in bulk with unskilled laborers, using inexpensive metals and glass inlets to create pendants and brooches that imitated dominant fashion trends. Pendants and brooches were popular accessories during the 18th and 19th centuries. It is impossible to know the multitude of symbolic meanings that a pendant may have had for an individual, though Brown (2012) and Paup (2001) discuss patterns in

111 jewelry found at the LJP, mainly the amount of jewelry and buttons with stars either pressed into them or carved. Carnevali points to the 1890s as a time in which “star and crescent” designs were in style and discussed as fashionable in Lady’s Book and Ladies’ Home Journal (Carnevali 2011: 302; Ladies’ Home Journal 1890). Of the total jewelry artifacts recovered, four pendants were unearthed from the LJP cabins. Brooches held a functional and decorative purpose, being pinned to garments and fastened to neckwear for women (White 2008; Cunnington 1959). Like pendants, there are many symbolic meanings one might attach to one’s brooch, and these meanings are not easily legible in the archaeological record. Of the total jewelry artifacts recovered, 31 brooch fragments were unearthed from the LJP cabins.

Finger Rings and Earrings

Finger rings are among one of the oldest artifacts recovered from prehistoric and historic sites around the world. Finger rings can symbolize status, wealth, occupation, marriage, and/or religious affiliations, to name a few (Bianco et. al. 2006; Brown 2012;

Carnevali 2011:314; Gijanto 2011:645). Finger rings can be made from many materials including horn, bone, shell, hard and soft plastics, glass, gemstones, and metal. They can have many decorative elements including etching and stamping, as well as the addition of glass, plastic, gemstone, and paste inlets. Of the total amount of jewelry recovered, nine finger rings were unearthed in three of the seven LJP cabins. These rings were made of silver, bone or horn, and wood.

The adornment of the body through scarification and dental modifications among enslaved Africans as hyper-visible markers of their ethnic and tribal affiliations is not typically seen past the first generation of those enslaved in the Americas (Handler 1994; Mullins 1992; Heath 1999). Piercing of ears, however, appears to be a long-standing

112 tradition among African Americans in the 19th and 20th centuries as seen in antebellum runaway advertisements (Hunt 1994; Heath 2004) and postbellum photography (Foster 1997; Hunt and Sibley 1994; Brubacher 2002), as well as through descriptions WPA interviewers give of their African American interviewees (Sally Banks 1932). As one interviewer stated, Sally Banks had “Heavy gold earrings” that hung “from her ears” (Sally Banks 1932). Of the total jewelry artifacts recovered from the LJP, five earring-related artifacts were unearthed.

Watches

The study of horology, the science of measuring time and the manufacturing of timekeeping pieces, began over 5,000 years ago with Egyptians, who invented sundials, both stationary and portable, that demonstrated the passing of time based on the position of the sun (Foundation of Horology; Rector 1994:478). Modern pocket watches of the 19th century were borne from mechanical timekeeping devices of the 16th and 17th centuries developed in England and elsewhere in Europe (Rector 1994:478). The onset of the industrial revolution and the creation of a railroad system that spanned large geographic areas in the middle of the 19th century created the necessity for factory owners and railroad companies to have accurate and consistent timekeeping devices (Rector 1994:478;

McCrossen 2010: 8). Portable timekeeping devices of 17th and 18th centuries were purchased and worn by the wealthiest members of society due to cost and the consistent need for repair

(McCrossen 2010). However, the 19th century created avenues for the acquisition of pocket watches by men and women, rich and poor. Like other jewelry artifacts mentioned above, the 19th century led to the mass production of watch components which were more efficient and required less labor-intensive manufacturing techniques. Georges-Auguste

113 Leschot was a leader in the invention of clock-making tools and interchangeable timekeeping parts (Moore 1912). Inventions from clockmakers, like the pantograph by Antoine Lechaud and changeable escapement devices by Georges Frederic Roskopf in 1868, led to the mass production of inexpensive portable timekeepers and easily changeable parts (Moore 1911; McCrossen 2010: 2; Utility Patent No. 75,463 [Roskopf 1868]). In 1875 Montgomery and Wade Co. sold watches that ranged from $3 to $25

(Figure 4.11) (Montgomery and Wade Co. 1875). Twenty years later, in 1895, Sears, Roebuck and Co. stated that:

The Boys, the Girls, the Rich and the Poor can all carry watches at the prices we ask… you can own a watch at a very few cents advance on cost to manufacture, and by the use of improved and automatic machinery, watches can now be made and sold for $2.00 or $3.00 which are a credit to those sold fifty years ago for $25.00 to $40.00” (Sears, Roebuck and Co. 1895: 375). Of the total jewelry-related artifacts recovered from the LJP, only one contained fragments of watch parts. Cabin II-B-2 contained 13 fragments of a pocket watch. Brown discusses the pocket watch as having been likely owned by a man (2012:39); however, McCrossen discusses in detail the growing fashion trend, during the mid and late 19th century, for women to carry pocket watches with them that hung from a chain either as pendants, pinned to bodices, or attached to chatelaines (2010:10).

114

Figure 4.11 Listing for “Watches and Jewelry” from the 1875 Montgomery and Wade Co. Catalog

Beads

Several archaeologists have examined the presence of beads in the archaeological record at colonial, antebellum and postbellum sites (Blakey 2001; Stine et. al 1996; Bianco,

DeCorse and Howson 2006; Foster 1997; Owens 2000). Glass beads are commonly recovered from historic sites, in part because one beaded necklace or bracelet could be made of dozens of beads. Within studies centered on African American life, many scholars have examined the use of beads to adorn the body as necklaces, bracelets, or anklets, to decorate clothing, such as blouses and shoes, as well as to decorate furniture (Owens 2000; Bianco et. al 2006; Sears and Roebuck Co. 1895). It is often difficult to determine how beads may have been used in the past. Mortuary archaeology has provided the most detailed view of past uses of beads (Owens 2000, Bianco et. al 2006). Brown (2012:116) states that “several of the glass beads were found still ‘inline’ as if the necklace entered the archaeological deposit of the cabin whole” in cabin I-A-2 at the LJP.

Several works detail the process of manufacturing drawn and wire-wound beads (Kidd 1970; Karklins 1985; Marcoux 2012; Sprague 2002; Grillo and Aultman 2014; White 2008). Drawn beads are made through a process of drawing a mass of molten glass into a long hollow tube, which is then broken into individual beads (Marcoux 2012; Kidd 115 and Kidd 1970; Karklins 1985, 1994; Grillo and Aultman 2014). Wire-wound or mandrel- wound beads are created through a process of winding molten glass around a metal mandrel to achieve the desired diameter of the bead (Marcoux 2012; Kidd and Kidd 1970; Karklins 1985, 1994; Grillo and Aultman 2014). The Digital Archaeological Archive of

Comparative Slavery cataloging manual for beads outlines the following shapes for beads recovered at archaeological sites: barrel, disc, oval, triangular, biconical, faceted, spherical, tubular, collared sphere, not recorded, square, unidentifiable, conical, cylindrical, sub- spherical, and waisted (Grillo and Aultman 2014: 6). Of the 392 artifacts classified as jewelry recovered from the LJP, 276 beads were unearthed from excavations in seven of the cabins used for this project (Table 4.9). Of the total beads recovered from the LJP cabins, 167 were spherical beads, 49 were tubular beads, 31 were cylindrical beads, and 29 were seed beads. Seed beads are drawn spherical beads but due to their particular artifact type are not classified as spherical beads.

116 I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Total Count Total % Bead Type

Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count %

Spherical Bead 23 8.33% 28 10.14% 31 11.23% 9 3.26% 44 15.94% 13 4.71% 19 6.88% 167 60.51%

Tubular Bead 4 1.45% 29 10.51% 2 0.72% 3 1.09% 5 1.81% 2 0.72% 4 1.45% 49 17.75%

Cylindrical Bead 5 1.81% 9 3.26% 2 0.72% 1 0.36% 8 2.90% 4 1.45% 2 0.72% 31 11.23%

Seed Bead 2 0.72% 4 1.45% 2 0.72% 0.00% 15 5.43% 2 0.72% 4 1.45% 29 10.51%

Grand Total 34 12.32% 70 25.36% 37 13.41% 13 4.71% 72 26.09% 21 7.61% 29 10.51% 276 100.00%

Table 4.9 Table outlining count of Bead type by cabin at the LJP

117 Much of the work regarding beads at African American sites of enslavement center on the high frequency of blue beads unearthed, often being linked to Africanisms (Yamin 2005:11; Stine et al. 1996; Brown 2012; Heath 1999). Owens’ work at the Freedman’s Cemetery in Dallas Texas, however, outlines that blue beads do not always dominate at

African American sites, and that “beads of any color have always played an important role in West African society” (Owens 2000: 429). Lindbergh (1999) states that “black, faceted beads were preferred around 1850, but by 1870 these had been superseded by large melon- ribbed beads with a silver lining, with not a single black bead being produced” (1999: 55). Although Lindbergh outlines general trends of bead color across time, specifically as it relates to her work at an Australian site, Stine et al. states that as late as the 1930s, African Americans continued wearing beads (Figure 4.12), particularly black ones, as a spiritual technology to prevent illness (1996: 62). Of the 276 beads used in this study, 271 had recorded colors (Table 4.10). Of the five beads without color, four were ceramic, with a natural unglazed tan tone, while one was made of red fired clay.

Figure 4.12 Black glass bead unearthed at LJP. Lot 07207, Unit 915E/980N Level 11

118 Bead Color I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Total Count Total %

Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count %

Blue 6 2.21% 24 8.86% 8 2.95% 5 1.85% 25 9.23% 10 3.69% 6 2.21% 84 31.00%

Black 8 2.95% 13 4.80% 18 6.64% 3 1.11% 12 4.43% 4 1.48% 10 3.69% 68 25.09%

Colorless 10 3.69% 14 5.17% 7 2.58% 1 0.37% 8 2.95% 3 1.11% 4 1.48% 47 17.34%

Amber 1 0.37% 0.00% 2 0.74% 2 0.74% 10 3.69% 1 0.37% 4 1.48% 20 7.38%

White 0.00% 8 2.95% 1 0.37% 1 0.37% 6 2.21% 2 0.74% 1 0.37% 19 7.01%

Green 2 0.74% 8 2.95% 0.00% 1 0.37% 2 0.74% 0.00% 1 0.37% 14 5.17%

Red 2 0.74% 2 0.74% 0.00% 0.00% 4 1.48% 1 0.37% 1 0.37% 10 3.69%

Brown 3 1.11% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.37% 0.00% 0.00% 4 1.48%

Violet 2 0.74% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.37% 0.00% 0.00% 3 1.11%

Amethyst 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.37% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.37%

Aqua 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.37% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 0.37%

Grand Total 34 12.55% 69 25.46% 37 13.65% 13 4.80% 70 25.83% 21 7.75% 27 9.96% 271 100.00%

Table 4.10 Table outlining Bead color by cabin at the LJP

119 HAIR COMBS AND HAIR PINS AT THE LJP

Hair combs are among the oldest artifacts unearthed from prehistoric sites around the world (Ashb 2005, 2009; Mrozowski et. al 1996; Wilki 1994:2, White and White 1995). The design itself, a shaft with teeth that are perpendicular to the shaft, has stayed relatively the same, while the material composition of combs has shifted over time. Combs were made from a variety of materials before the invention of soft and hard plastics, such as bone, horn, wood, and tortoiseshell (Sherrow 2006; Foster 1997). In addition to metal, rubber, and organic material types, prior to emancipation enslaved African Americans were known to use "card," which were industrial combs used to process cotton and wool, to detangle their hair (Foster 1997).

Modern combs are made of metal or plastic. Before the invention of stainless steel in 1913, metal combs were made of silver or tin plating to prevent corrosion. However, this made them very expensive (Torota and Eubank 2010). The invention of hard rubber by Charles Goodyear in 1841, and improvements to the manufacturing process by Nelson

Goodyear in 1851, led to the creation of inexpensive rubber combs in the mid 19th century. The India Hard Rubber Comb Company began operations in 1854 in Queens, New York and was leased by Charles Goodyear to produce a variety of rubber goods including rubber combs (Sherrow 2006). These combs, in the same design as their organically carved counterparts, typically lasted longer due to their more synthetic nature. Although, as the combs unearthed at the LJP can attest, these combs bent at the shafts and teeth were prone to breaking off. All combs found at the LJP were made of rubber (Figure 4.13).

120

Figure 4.13 Image of rubber comb found at LJP. Lot 00774, unit 1020E/1100N, Level 4.

Hair Comb Uses

Hair combs have many uses. They have been used for grooming hair, through a process of detangling coarse and silky hair types, which aids in hair and scalp health.

Hairstyles for African American women during the 19th century included parting hair down the center and pinning hair to the back of the head with combs, having the hair pulled into a bun, plaiting hair, and wearing hair curled in ringlets in the back (Brubacher 2000;

Cunnington 1959; Foster; 1997). These hairstyles would have used combs during the styling process. Although most of the combs found at the LJP were manufactured with plain, undecorated shafts, one comb did display a twisted rope design which could have served for styling purposes as well as being an additional decorative element to be seen by onlookers (Figure 4.14). In addition to using combs to style hair, combs along with hairpins, ribbons, and beads have been known to be used as decorative additions to hairstyles (Cunnington 1959; Tortora and Eubank 2010; Brubacher 2000).

121 Moreover, grooming hair with combs was used to combat knotting and to remove macroscopic parasites such as fleas, lice, and fungus. Hair and the altering of hair was a primary way for Black women, during the antebellum and postbellum era, to express themselves (Camp 2002; White and White 1995). Although hair combs and hairpins make up little more than 3% of the total artifacts examined (see Table 4.1), this artifact speaks to the daily practice of hair care and alteration of hair by black men and women of all ages at the LJP. Of the total artifacts examined for this project, 63 hair combs fragments and one hairpin were found in seven of the cabins at the LJP (Table 4.11).

Figure 4.14 Vulcanized rubber comb roped shaft recovered from the LJP. Lot 004505, Unit 1010E/1095N Level 4

122 I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Total Total Cabins Coun % t Coun Coun Coun Coun Coun Coun Coun % % % % % % % t t t t t t t

Hair 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% 1 1.56% 0.00% 1 1.56% Pin

Comb 20 31.25% 5 7.81% 7 10.94% 6 9.38% 15 23.44% 7 10.94% 3 4.69% 63 98.44%

Grand 31.25 7.81 10.94 9.38 23.44 12.50 4.69 100.00 20 5 7 6 15 8 3 64 Total % % % % % % % %

Table 4.11 Table outlining count of hair comb and hairpin data recovered at LJP by cabin

123 CLOTHING AND ADORNMENT DATA FROM THE LJP CABINS AND THE RANSOM AND SARAH WILLIAMS FARMSTEAD

In addition to the 2,759 artifacts analyzed from seven different cabins at the LJP, I also analyzed 504 artifacts from the RSWF site (Table 4.12). The 3,240 artifacts that make up the material culture data of this comparative analysis include clothing fasteners, combs, hair pins, and jewelry. Of the 3,240 artifacts analyzed here, clothing fasteners made up 86.85% of the total artifacts analyzed. Combs and hairpins combined make up just over three percent of the artifacts examined. Although this artifact type represents a relatively small portion of the assemblage total, combs and hair combs represent a material residue that can speak to how African Americans practiced hair care and altered their corporeal form. The last artifact group examined was jewelry. Jacqueline Jones (1985:25) found that African American post-emancipation life was shaped by nomadic movements that left little room for the acquisition of material goods outside of subsistence needs. However, archaeologists have found that during the antebellum and postbellum eras, African Americans were able, through trade, in-kind services, or monetary exchanges, to acquire goods, whether cloth for personal possession, ribbons for hair, pendants, and/or necklaces

(Heath 2004; Franklin 2004; Brown 2012; 2001; Lee 2014). The postbellum era brought with it new economic challenges for all African Americans. However, the acquisition of jewelry (9.91 percent of the total artifacts examined) is one example of the ways African Americans partook in consumer culture at the turn of the 20th century and purchased portable possessions that easily moved with them as they navigated the Texan post-emancipation landscape. The RSWF had a higher number of clothing fasteners, hair combs, and pins than most of the cabins at the LJP.

124 Clothing Fasteners Combs Hair Pins Jewelry Ex. Area Total Count Total Percentage

Count % Count % Count % Count %

II-B-1 590 18.21% 15 0.46% 0.00% 76 2.35% 681 21.02%

RSWF 430 13.27% 39 1.20% 2 0.06% 10 0.31% 481 14.85%

II-B-2 396 12.22% 7 0.22% 1 0.03% 27 0.83% 431 13.30%

I-B-3 364 11.23% 7 0.22% 0.00% 38 1.17% 409 12.62%

I-A-1 281 8.67% 20 0.62% 0.00% 41 1.27% 342 10.56%

II-B-3 299 9.23% 3 0.09% 0.00% 35 1.08% 337 10.40%

I-A-2 209 6.45% 5 0.15% 0.00% 76 2.35% 290 8.95%

II-A-1 245 7.56% 6 0.19% 0.00% 18 0.56% 269 8.30%

Grand Total 2814 86.85% 102 3.15% 3 0.09% 321 9.91% 3240 100.00%

Table 4.12 Total Number of Artefactual data recovered from seven LJP Cabins and the RSWF

125 Clothing Fasteners at LJP and RSWF

In comparison to the LJP cabin assemblages, the RSWF had a higher number of clothing fasteners than most cabins at the LJP (Table 4.13). However, upon closer examination of the percentages of each artifact type in the LJP cabins and the RSWF, all of the assemblages have a relatively similar profile. This suggests that people at all the sites were wearing similar clothing. It is interesting to note that the RSWF had slightly higher counts for suspender-related clothing fasteners, combs, hairpin fragments, and busk fasteners than most LJP cabins. I speak more on this difference in the coming chapter, but for now I will say that differences in clothing fasteners have the potential to speak to more than just status and class differences between wage labors, tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and landowners, but to the types of labor each performed in public and private spaces. Lindbergh writes that “the very ordinariness of the buttons hampers definition of the sex or status of the wearer. Certainly, the 'trouser' and jacket type buttons relate to the working man's attire, but the small mother-of-pearl and porcelain buttons were used on the underclothing and shirts worn by men, women, and children from all social groups” (1999:56). As it relates to this research project, Lindbergh’s statement illuminates how African Americans, whether landowners or tenant farmers, fastened their utilitarian clothing with buttons, clothing fasteners, hook-and-eyes, and rivets. The result of this is seen in the large numbers of clothing fasteners recovered at all eight sites. This fact is particularly evident when examining buttons at the LJP and the RSWF.

126 Busk Fastener Button Clothing Buckle Hook and Eye Rivet Shoe Buckle Suspender Excavated area Total Count Total % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count %

II-B-1 0.00% 549 19.52% 21 0.75% 4 0.14% 10 0.36% 0.00% 6 0.21% 590 20.97%

RSWF 8 0.28% 378 13.44% 21 0.75% 5 0.18% 0.00% 3 0.11% 15 0.53% 430 15.29%

II-B-2 0.00% 365 12.98% 20 0.71% 5 0.18% 4 0.14% 0.00% 2 0.07% 396 14.08%

I-B-3 0.00% 339 12.05% 15 0.53% 1 0.04% 5 0.18% 0.00% 4 0.14% 364 12.94%

II-B-3 0.00% 281 9.99% 9 0.32% 0.00% 5 0.18% 0.00% 3 0.11% 298 10.59%

I-A-1 0.00% 269 9.56% 4 0.14% 1 0.04% 3 0.11% 3 0.11% 1 0.04% 281 9.99%

II-A-1 0.00% 232 8.25% 6 0.21% 0.00% 2 0.07% 0.00% 5 0.18% 245 8.71%

I-A-2 0.00% 195 6.93% 9 0.32% 2 0.07% 2 0.07% 0.00% 1 0.04% 209 7.43%

Grand Total 8 0.28% 2608 92.71% 105 3.73% 18 0.64% 31 1.10% 6 0.21% 37 1.32% 2813 100.00%

Table 4.13 Clothing fasteners recovered at the LJP and the RSWF.

127 As stated above, this project is not focused on addressing whether tenant farmers, wage laborers, sharecroppers, and landowning families at the LJP and RSWF were poor or affluent. Instead, through an examination of clothing and adornment artifacts, this project is interested in illuminating the lives of African Americans in late 19th and early 20th century Texas, and how the nuances of their positionalities shaped their sartorial practices. Higher counts of buttons within various assemblages may suggest many things, including the types of labor being conducted by those in the dwellings. Paul Mullins (2006), and

Thomas and Thomas (2004) have considered the higher number of buttons at historic sites, which reflect tasks such as laundering and mending clothing, a traditional labor role for women during that time. Domestic sites with higher counts of buttons – the RSWF, cabins II-B-I, II-B-2, I-B-3, I-A-1, and II-A-1 – thus suggest women’s labor in laundering and mending clothing. Archaeologists have discussed in depth how the material composition of buttons may indicate the types of clothing worn (Pool 1991; Peacock 1973; Lindbergh 1999).

Prosser buttons, for example, as plain utilitarian buttons and due to their mass production, were readily accessible and as such were attached to a variety of clothing styles, both for everyday wear and for fancier occasions, and were worn by all genders while performing any number of daily tasks. Prosser buttons were the highest recovered button material type at both the LJP and the RSWF (See Table 4.14 and Table 4.15). Metal buttons, attached to more masculine-presenting work clothing, may signify more work-related clothing needed to withstand the labor endured by the wearer. Of the total buttons recovered from the LJP and the RSWF, 15.02% and 24.67% of the buttons, respectively, were made of metal. More delicate buttons, made of shell and glass beads, may have been worn more occasionally, for example for as one’s “Sunday best,” or situationally, such as while performing tasks as

128 a domestic servant. Of the total buttons recovered from the LJP and the RSWF, 4.54% and

2.92% of the buttons respectively were made of glass.

Button Count Percentage Material Type

Prosser 1232 51.27%

Ecology 681 28.34%

Metal 361 15.02%

Glass 109 4.54%

Rubber 20 0.83%

Grand Total 2403 100.00%

Table 4.14 Count of buttons recovered from the LJP by material type

129 Button Material Count Percentage Type

Prosser 178 47.21%

Metal 93 24.67%

Ecology 83 22.02%

Glass 11 2.92%

Rubber 9 2.39%

Composite 3 0.80% Grand Total 377 100.00%

Table 4.15 Count of buttons recovered from the RSWF by material type

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, colored buttons, particularly colored Prosser buttons, were widely available since the 1850s. Additionally, buttons with more decorative patterning, such as calico and gingham designs, were available but required more labor and as such cost more to consumers. Patterns in the color of buttons may be the result of African American aesthetic choices chosen by people at the LJP and the RSWF. Like the LJP, Black colored buttons were recovered from the RSWF in the highest frequency. Unlike the

LJP, though, which after black buttons showed high percentages of red (24.57%), blue (15.09%), and green (15.09%) buttons, colored buttons at the RSWF were fairly uncommon in comparison to the number of black buttons, with brown, pink, dark purple, dark brown, and blue collectively making up just over 30% (Table 4.16).

130 Button Color Count Percentages

Black 23 67.65%

Brown 4 11.76%

Pink 2 5.88%

Dark Purple 2 5.88%

Purple/Gray 1 2.94%

Dark Brown or Black 1 2.94%

Blue 1 2.94%

Grand Total 34 100.00%

Table 4.16 Total count of Buttons by color at the RSWF

Additionally, there were significant differences in the percentage of combs and jewelry between the LJP cabins and the RSWF. As mentioned above, styling African American hair was potentially an act of agency demonstrated by African Americans. This act was also a situational one, when considering how people styled their hair in the rural late 19th century for occasions such as mourning and church as well as different labor tasks – for example field or domestic labor. These situational stylings are tied to the socioeconomic positionality of African American women. The combs and hairpins unearthed at RSWF account for 39.05% of the total comb and hairpins from all eight domestic assemblages (Table 4.17). This percentage is higher than any of the LJP cabins. Moreover, the percentage of jewelry unearthed at the RSWF was significantly lower than any of the LJP cabins, accounting for just 3.12% total (Table 4.18).

131

Excavated Comb Hair pin Total Count Total %

Areas Count % Count %

RSWF 39 37.14% 2 1.90% 41 39.05%

I-A-1 20 19.05% 0.00% 20 19.05% II-B-1 15 14.29% 0.00% 15 14.29%

II-B-2 7 6.67% 1 0.95% 8 7.62%

I-B-3 7 6.67% 0.00% 7 6.67%

II-A-1 6 5.71% 0.00% 6 5.71%

I-A-2 5 4.76% 0.00% 5 4.76%

II-B-3 3 2.86% 0.00% 3 2.86% Grand Total 102 97.14% 3 2.86% 105 100.00%

Table 4.17 Combs and hairpin Artefactual data recovered from seven cabins at the LJP and the RSWF

132

Excavated Area Jewelry Total Count Total %

Count %

I-A-2 76 23.68% 76 23.68%

II-B-1 76 23.68% 76 23.68%

I-A-1 41 12.77% 41 12.77%

I-B-3 38 11.84% 38 11.84%

II-B-3 35 10.90% 35 10.90%

II-B-2 27 8.41% 27 8.41%

II-A-1 18 5.61% 18 5.61%

RSWF 10 3.12% 10 3.12%

Grand Total 321 100.00% 321 100.00%

Table 4.18 Jewelry artefactual data recovered from the LJP and the RSWF

CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I examined clothing and adornment artifacts from the LJP quarters’ cabins to build a foundation for a discussion regarding the ways race, gender, class, and geographic location shaped sartorial practices among Africans Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Texas. The following chapters dive deeper into interpretations of the artifact assemblages from LJP and RSWF to speak to gendered processes of self- making among residents. In the following chapter, the data mentioned above is used to interpret the production of Black womanhood as an identity formation practice by African American women in late 19th and early 20th centuries in rural Texas. Chapter five will center on my interpretations of the material culture data discussed above. In that chapter, I

133 outline Black Womanhood as an identity formation shaped by African American women’s labor, aesthetic choices, practices of consumerism, acquisition of portable possessions, and processes of social reproduction.

134 Chapter 5: The Clothes on Her Back: Interpreting Sartorial Practices of Self-Making at the Levi Jordan Plantation

“We wore lowell clothes and I never seed no other kind of dress till after surrender.” - Mariah Snyder, Texas Ex-Slave Narratives Part 4, page 58

I open this chapter with a circa 1895 photograph of African American men, women, and children picking cotton in Georgia (Figure 5.1) and a quote from Mariah Snyder, an ex-enslaved woman who labored and lived in Texas. Within the captured sepia tones of the stereoscope are the complexities of racial, gender, class, and age realities experienced by African American farmers in the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. Women are dressed in gowns fastened with hook-and-eyes and buttons, along with gingham blouses that matched their patterned headscarves. These were coupled with coarse cotton petticoats fashioned with light tone aprons. Dried cotton bristles pricked at the flesh of these laborers, as they picked bolls of cotton that were placed into the bottom of sacks that were slung over their shoulders. This image depicts formations of Black womanhood during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this chapter I argue that constructions of Black womanhood – one aspect of which were shaped by daily sartorial practices of self-making - illuminate the realities of race, gender and class oppression that Black women faced in their everyday lives whether working in the fields as agricultural labors or in the homes of their White employers as domestic servants. Throughout this chapter I do not directly address new insights gleaned solely from the archaeological data recovered from the Levi Jordan

Plantation (LJP). Instead, through a combination of material culture, documentary and oral history data, I emphasize the multitude of uses particular artifacts could have had in the past, behaviors that could have accompanied their use, and the relationship operations power and oppression had to African American experiences that structured said behaviors.

135 Digital archival collections provided the bulk of documentary evidence I use throughout this chapter. The majority of the photographs used are from Cornell University’s Loewentheil Collection of African-American Photographs. Additionally, I have pulled from Emory University’s Robert Langmuir African American Photograph Collection, as well as archives from Ancestry.com, which houses a full digital collection of Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalogues from the 19th century into the present.

136

Figure 5.1 Stereoscope of African American men, women, and children picking cotton. The Caption reads Cotton is King, Plantation Scene, Georgia, U.S.A. Copyright 1895 by Strohmeyer & Wyman Publishers. Curtesy of Cornell University’s Loewentheil Collection of African-American Photographs

The labor captured in Figure 5.1 was not gendered; everyone labored in what seemed like endless fields of white cotton or green sugar cane stalks and coffee plants. Men were dressed in dark trousers, which were held up with tin and copper alloy belt-buckles as well as suspender fasteners. Trousers were coupled with light colored shirts which they then accompanied with black soft slouch hats. This labor also knew no age limit, it was learned by the young as soon as they were able to participate. Thus, the socialization of labor and dress passed from adults to children, as evidenced by the young girl in Figure 5.1, dressed in her gingham gown and patterned headscarf that matched the clothing of

137 adult women picking cotton nearby. The young girl stands next to a nearly full wicker basket that reached up to her waist, adding what she could to the collection. "Surrender," as Mariah Snyder called the emancipation of roughly four million African Americans in 1865, marked the start of the Reconstruction era, which brought with it new challenges and opportunities. In Snyder's Works Progress Administration (WPA) ex-slave narrative, she notes clear differences in sartorial practices from the antebellum and postbellum eras. "Lowell clothes," as Snyder stated, were made of coarse cotton cloth that the enslaved were provided by plantation owners, and were often produced on site by enslaved seamstresses (Foster 1997:75). These pieces of clothing were plain in design, with decoration and stylization coming from the enslaved who, throughout many WPA narratives, recount the myriad ways they dyed their clothing with "sumac berries or sweet gum bark" to align with personal aesthetics (e.g., Jenny Proctor 1930: 214). The postbellum era brought with it the rise of consumer culture and different avenues of market accessibility that contributed to opportunities for newly emancipated African Americans to engage in different sartorial practices within the bounds of economic and geographic access while they navigated racial and gender subjugation (See Chapter two for more detail).

It is the buttons, buckles, and hook-and-eyes, along with hair combs and jewelry, which are a testament to the ways tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and wage laborers who lived and worked at the LJP during the postbellum era engaged in sartorial practices. I opened this project asking how race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression shaped African American women's identity formation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Texas. In this chapter, I argue that quotidian sartorial practices of self-making act as integral to formations of Black womanhood post-emancipation. It is through the repetition of daily practices that identities are formed and reshaped (Atalay and Hastorf 138 2006; Hodder and Cessford 2004), and dressing one's body for the day is one such example of repetition of daily practice. I define Black womanhood as a constructed identity that moves fluidly over regions and shifts over time, that acknowledges the particularities of African American women's subjectivities and that, like other identity formations, is constructed in alignment and disjunction with hegemonic ideas. I theoretically ground my use of the term "Black womanhood" within the work of Black women scholars who define the social positionality of African American women as one that shapes and is shaped by hegemonic notions of womanhood and femininity (Crenshaw 1991; Hill-Collins 2000, 2004). I conceptualize the complexity of African American women's social positionality as contradictory, pulling from Toni Morrison's account of African American women as "contradiction itself"

(Morrison 1992) and Patricia Hill-Collins’ (2000) theorization of Black women as "outsiders-within." I discuss Black womanhood as a process of self-making that "re- inscribes and debunks" (McKittrick) ideologies about the body and that speaks to and pushes against histories of oppression that position Black women outside the realm of hegemonic femininity and womanhood. This process of self-making through practices of dress creates and reifies a palimpsest. I use the term "palimpsest" as a means of reading

African American women's bodies as a text that is layered with histories of oppression which shaped past and shape present formations of identity (see below for more detail). In this way, sartorial practices are processes of identity formation that build atop of histories of oppression, "inscribing several times" ideologies that speak to and push against these histories. This chapter outlines my interpretations of the clothing, adornment, and grooming data gathered from excavations at the LJP. I suggest that the data mentioned above is the evidence of constructions of Black womanhood which were formed through daily sartorial 139 practices of self-making in which African American women. This chapter examines how race, gender, and class oppressions impacted the construction of Black womanhood - as seen through sartorial practices - within spheres of labor, as well as through the threat of racialized and gendered violence, the desire for self-expression, and processes of social reproduction. Charles Orser (1998) outlined cultural continuity and cultural change, domination and resistance, and theories of race, gender, and class as three of the four major themes within archaeological studies of African American life and culture. Within adornment studies of African American life from enslavement (Heath 2004, 1998, 1994; Galle 2004; Thomas and Thomas 2004) through Reconstruction (Fitts 1999; Wall 1999; Mullins 1999) archaeologists often interpret cultural continuity, cultural change, and/or domination and resistance as conformity or resistance to social trends set by urban, White, middle-class America. However, this project aims to expand archaeological studies on adornment through challenging interpretations of conformity or resistance. This project complicates interpretations of conformity or resistance by conceptualizing the complexity of African American women's social positionality as contradictory; insomuch as their bodies - and the act of dressing their bodies - have the potential to "produce diverse narratives that both re- inscribe and debunk the racial tropes that emit from their bodies" (McKittrick 2000:224). This conceptualization challenges reductionist interpretations of conformity or resistance by viewing Black women as neither absolutely liberated nor as pure victims. I apply this framework to my interpretations of clothing, adornment, and grooming data from the LJP as a way of locating the social lives of Black women in the archaeological record through an intersectional analysis of past sartorial practices. This chapter focuses on everyday modalities of being - as spaces where constructions of Black womanhood were formed. I focus specifically on the ways sartorial practices are shaped by the above-mentioned 140 operations of power and oppression within spheres of labor, as well as due to the threat of racial-sexual violence, desires for self-expression and processes of social reproduction.

DRESS AND LABOR

"Their lives were not easy. Their lives were hard. They were black women who for the most part worked outside the home serving white folks, cleaning their houses, washing their clothes, tending their children-black women who worked in the fields or in the streets, whatever they could do to make ends meet, whatever was necessary" - Yearning by bell hooks (1990: 77)

African Americans of all genders worked as wage laborers, tenant farmers, and sharecroppers at the LJP during the post-emancipation era (See Chapter two for a detailed discussion). African Americans toiled in agriculture fields at the LJP cultivating sugar and cotton crops while also maintaining their own subsistence plots growing "corn, sweet potatoes, and peas" as well as raising "livestock such as beef, pigs, and chickens" (Brown 2012: 47). In addition to agricultural labor that upheld the Southern economy and agricultural subsistence needs met by cultivating small crops that could be used as a means for additional income, African American women also partook in the bulk of homemaking chores. Going back to the 1895 image (Figure 5.1) with which I opened this chapter, all tasks both agricultural and domestic were conducted in clothing that aligned with traditional masculine and feminine gender roles regardless of the labor people were involved in (Sharpless 1999:160-161; Hunt Sibley 1994: 20-26; Brubacher 2002: 29-43).

Men wore trousers, often fastened with rivets and metal or rubber buttons, that were then held up with belts and suspenders. Meanwhile, women wore muslins, bodices, and petticoats fastened at the waist with buttons or hook-and-eyes. In general, the clothing fasteners at the LJP exhibit characteristics of standard utilitarian sartorial practices with an

141 emphasis on ordinary plain dish ceramic buttons, metal and rubber buttons, rivets, clothing buckles, suspenders, and hook-and-eyes for fastening underclothing, work shirts, blouses, trousers, and petticoats (See table 4.1). The ideology of the time that dictated traditional feminine labor was interwoven with Protestant values of modesty demonstrated through dress practices designed to cover the body (White and White 1995: 180, 1995: 72). However, as I mentioned above, Black women's bodies were layered with a palimpsest of histories shaped by oppression that left them outside the bounds of hegemonic conceptualizations of femininity and womanhood. Sartorial practices in which African American women engaged are an aspect of self- making that inscribed on the body ideologies that spoke to and pushed against histories of oppression that positioned Black women outside the realm of hegemonic femininity and womanhood. This process of self-making is the creation and reification of a palimpsest. I use the term "palimpsest," pulling from the work of Avery Gordon (1997) in Ghostly Matters, as a means of reading African American women's bodies as a text that is layered with histories of oppression which shaped past - and shapes present - formations of identity (See chapter one for more detail). In this way, Black women's bodies - before they are dressed - have a history written on them that is read through the color of their flesh and the texture of their hair in the larger society as outside the realm of hegemonic femininity and womanhood. The act of dressing speaks to a process of layering - creating and reinforcing a palimpsest - that has the potential to counter ideologies that view African American woman solely as chattel and commodities; however, it does not erase the histories oppression written on their flesh. This palimpsest is a result of the racial and gender subjection African American women endured. Davis (1981:7) writes that for Black women, "the alleged benefits of the ideology of femininity did not accrue to her. She was not sheltered or protected; she would 142 not remain oblivious to the desperate struggle for existence unfolding outside the 'home.'"

Labor for African American women living in rural Texas during the antebellum era and into the postbellum era was shaped by arduous agricultural and domestic labor (Sharpless 1999: 159-188; Jones 1985:25; Berry 2007). Furthermore, the clothing African American women wore while doing agricultural labor was tied to negotiations of femininity, the realities of racial, gender, and class subjection, and the necessity for functional clothing needed for rural southern agricultural labor (e.g., place). Although African American women tended to land, cooked over hearths, sewed, and mended and washed clothes, gendered ideology about women's appropriate dress was so influential that Black women adhered to it even though their clothes were often incredibly restrictive for the kinds of labor they had to perform.

Hook-and-eye fasteners recovered at the LJP may speak to these dynamics, as hook-and-eye fasteners provide an avenue to discuss shifts in clothing trends over time. The late 19th century marked the "Bustle Period," named after the device that shaped skirt silhouettes and was worn, in addition to corsets and stays, to restrict the waist in order to provide a more hourglass figure (Tortora and Eubank 2010; Steele 2003). High fashion of the time, wildly popular among the upper class, pushed for corseted styled feminine clothing at the risk of disfigurement of the body, as internal organs shifted to create the desired bodily form (Steele 2003: 67-86). This trend made its way out of upper-class households down to rural areas of the country, as African American women in the rural

South engaged in these dress practices. Tight corsets, bustles, and bodices would have prohibited the movement necessary for daily tasks as tenant farmers and arduous domestic tasks. However, the fastening of petticoats with hook-and-eyes, coupled with aprons and gathered bodices at the waist, achieved a similar desired feminine form.

143 Hook-and-eye fasteners recovered at the LJP can be evidence of fastened petticoats, aprons and bodices worn by African American women who, in the rural South, were negotiating performances of gender with the needed functionality of clothing for the labor they performed. African American women negotiated the pull of social designations of femininity with the history of enslavement that demarcated them outside the bounds of femininity, along with the labor necessary for survival that wore on their clothing and their bodies. Constricting clothing was worn that went down to the ankles as the socialization of what constituted a woman - through gender presentation - permeated the social milieu, even as the social subjection that Black women endured positioned them outside the realm of traditional conceptualizations of femininity. African American women were "outsiders within" (Patricia Hill-Collins 2000; Harrison 2008), adhering to traditional feminine dress practices while simultaneous being positioned outside the range of femininity and womanhood in the larger society. One space where labor directly impacted the sartorial choices African American women were making was when they labored as domestic servants in White spaces. African American women who worked as domestic servants in White households in the rural South may have had additional considerations when dressing, including gender presentation and the functionality of the clothing they wore. Sartorial practices were situationally complex negotiations, at times shaped by the labor African American women conducted during the late 19th century. This labor was structured by race, gender, class, and age (Sharpless 1999:

159-188; Jones 1985:25; Berry 2007; Davis 1981:7; Glenn: 1985: 87-88). For example, over 1,232 common Prosser buttons were recovered from the tenant quarters, and it is possible that some were used by black women who served as domestics for the Jordan family or other families in the area. The whiteness of these fasteners, when coupled with white garments, would have emphasized an image of sanitation, cleanliness, and 144 trustworthiness. This interpretation is evidenced by Hester Holmes (Figure 5.2), who labored at the LJP in the Main House during the antebellum era and remained as a house servant after emancipation. Figure 5.2 is an image of Ms. Holmes wearing a short gown fastened with buttons, along with a dark-colored petticoat likely tied with ribbon or fastened with hook-and-eyes around her waist. Her hair is pulled back and covered with a headscarf. Her hands are interlaced as she stares at the camera. This image depicts the attire Ms. Holmes wore as she completed her daily tasks as a domestic servant, which included cooking, cleaning, laundering, and mending clothing for the Jordan family. After, she likely returned to her cabin to do home-keeping work while perhaps even maintaining her garden for subsistence needs. What stands out about this image is the cleanliness it portrays through the adornment of white on Hester's head, her blouse, and her apron. The buttons used on Hester's white blouse were likely plain Prosser buttons, which both align with the attire and are a testament to the labor Hester put into maintaining the Jordan House - modest and clean.

The quest for, and imposition of, modesty is tied to race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression that shaped the lives of African American women during the late 19th and early 20th century. The notion that African American women should dress modestly and cleanly in White spaces may have attempted to counter "controlling images" (Hill-Collins 2002) of African American women which depicted them in the larger society as "jezebels" - hyper-sexed beings. Controlling images are "powerful ideologies" that support the subjugation of African American women and are rooted in intersecting operations of race, gender, class, and sexuality (Hill-Collins 2002: 69). The creation and reification of the "Mammy," the desexualized Black feminine body solely in service to White people, counters the hyper-sexed image of the "Jezebel." However, the investment in notions of modesty and cleanliness did not change the structural and 145 individualized racialized-sexualized violence Black women faced while working in the homes of their White employers. In this way, sartorial practices rooted in modesty and cleanliness placed upon African American domestic servants is also a product of the matrix of domination that subjected Black women.

146

Figure 5.2 An early 20th century photograph of Hester Holmes, domestic servant at the Levi Jordan Plantation

DRESS AND VIOLENCE

The everyday dress practices of African American women may not have been shaped drastically by the kinds of labor they performed, but the threat of racial-sexual violence was impactful. In Alice Walker’s collection of prose, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens, she shares a story that her mother passed down to her regarding an incident that

147 highlighted the ways racialized and gendered violence shaped African American sartorial practices in the 1930s:

On the day my mother was to go into town for flour she received a large box of clothes from one of my aunts who was living in the North. The clothes were in good condition, though well worn, and my mother needed a dress, so she immediately put on one of those from the box and wore it into town. When she reached the distribution center and presented her voucher she was confronted by a white woman who looked her up and down with marked anger and envy. “What’d you come up here for?” the woman asked. “For some flour,” said my mother, presenting her voucher. “Humph,” said the woman, looking at her more closely and with unconcealed fury. “Anybody dressed up as good as you don’t need to come here begging for food.” “I ain’t begging,” said my mother; “the government is giving away flour to those that need it, and I need it. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. And these clothes I’m wearing was given to me.” But the woman had already turned to the next person in line, saying over her shoulder to the white man who was behind the counter with her, “The gall of niggers coming in here dressed better than me! (Walker 1983: 15-16)

Walker's mother, a sharecropper in 1930s rural Georgia, lived as many African American women did throughout the pre-civil rights era, with the constant threat of racialized and gendered violence (Truth 1850; Jacobs 1861; Beale 2008; Walker 1982; Morrison 1970, 1987; Hine 1995: 380-388; West 2002; Gross 2006; Davis 1998). Walker's story highlights how sartorial practices were highly racialized for African American people well into the 20th century. Additionally, Walker's story highlights that ways race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression influenced the dress practices of African American women as they moved beyond the spheres of agriculture and domestic labor. How African Americans appeared in public spaces could incite violence. To wear a trendy dress from "up North," for an African American woman in the rural South, meant pushing against ideals of race, gender, class, and status as seen through dress practices that were thought to be reserved for White Americans. These White Americans may have been in the same economic position as sharecropping Black families, but thought of themselves as 148 higher in status; an ideology upheld by the de jure legislation of Black Codes and maintained through White domestic terrorism inflicted against African Americans. This section will offer historicity to Walker's story, demonstrating the ways dress and violence were intimately interlinked with operations of race, gender, and class that constructed the social lives of African Americans during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In this section, I focus on the large majority of undecorated Prosser, bone, metal, and shell buttons as a possible reflection to situational dress practices engaged in by

African Americans at the LJP as a response to the threat of racialized and gendered violence that enveloped their daily lives. The majority of clothing fasteners at the site were undecorated clothing buckles, suspender fasteners, and buttons. Also, the majority of buttons recovered at the LJP were undecorated, meaning they lacked any color, decorative pattern or carved design to them (Table 5.1). Emancipation, and the rise of mass consumer culture during the late 19th century allowed people regardless of race access to inexpensive materials to dress and adorn their bodies.

149

Button Type Count %

Undecorated 1916 85.92%

Decorated 314 14.08%

Grand Total 2230 100.00%

Table 5.1. Table outlines total count of decorated and undecorated buttons recovered at the LJP

Seventeenth and eighteenth-century colonial sumptuary laws implemented throughout the Americas set restrictions on dress practices that sought to concretize social differences between races, classes, and binary genders (Stoler 2001:836; Wiecek 1977:268); however these were not strictly enforced during the late 19th and 20th centuries

(See chapter 2 for detailed discussion). As demonstrated in ex-slave narratives, these ideas continued to circulate through the antebellum and post-emancipation eras, entrenched more by custom than by law (Sitton and Conrad 2005). For White Americans, "the changed look of African Americans was the most visible and obvious result of emancipation" (White and

White 1998:88). Emancipation brought with it agency to dress the body and style the hair as one chose within the bounds of material and economic access. This social-reform provided avenues for African Americans to transform the Black social body through dress; however, "clothing's potential to transform the social body…existed in tension with regulations that sought to control such bodies" (Voss 2008:406). As a result, "feelings of disquiet" among White Americans surrounding the dress practices African Americans

150 engaged in occurred alongside the rise of racial violence towards African American bodies

(White and White 1998:87-88). This point is evidenced most clearly in the advent of ceremoniously lynching African American men who had fought in the Civil War, Spanish American War, and

WW1 for wearing their uniforms in public spaces throughout the American South (See chapter 2 for further discussion). The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) 2015 report titled "Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans," illuminates how "[B]lack veterans risked violence simply by wearing their uniforms on American soil" (EJI 2015). EJIs' survey of historical newspapers and oral histories demonstrates how the Black masculine body dressed in a soldiers' uniform came to symbolize a threat to White Americans who throughout the Reconstruction era codified racial hierarchies that upheld structural racism, which sought to subjugate African American populations. Additionally, throughout the antebellum and postbellum eras, there are accounts of African Americans, particularly women, having their hair violently cut or shaved from their heads (Camp 2002). These acts of violence were used by planters and overseers to punish enslaved workers while simultaneously attempting to push against Black people who took pride in their hair. Styling Black hair, in this case, meant African Americans were placing value on what

American society had deemed a simple commodity. This prideful ideology was a threat to social order that relied on the oppression of African Americans. Harriet Jacobs, who suffered sexual abuse at the hands of planter and slaveholder Dr. Flint, recounted how she

"had a fine head of hair" and how Dr. Flint "often railed about my pride of arranging it nicely" (Jacobs 1861: 218). Upon hearing that Jacobs was to birth a child, Dr. Flint "rushed from the house, and returned with a pair of shears" wherein he violently cut "every hair" close to Jacobs' head (Jacobs 1861: 218). African Americans of any gender did not need to wear a uniform or take pride in their hair to face the threat of violence from their White 151 counterparts, as any form of dress that did not resemble that of "field hands" could incite violence. This point is evidenced by Sitton and Conrad (2005:158) who wrote that:

Black travelers also dressed appropriately for their visits to town, and at many places-especially on weekdays-that meant dressing like field hands in overalls, straw hats, sunbonnets, and other items that looked like work clothing.

I believe the act of dressing "appropriately" while in public spaces necessitated situational dress practices among African American. I posit that situational dress practices - the practice of "dressing up" or "dressing down - was influenced by the threat of racial hostility; which was structured by race, gender, and class oppression. These patterns of violence illustrate the ways dress and the body were intricately linked to racialized and gendered hostilities.

Fisher and Loren (2003: 225) wrote that "the presentation of self allows an individual to 'dress up' or 'dress down' enabling one to reveal and conceal different selves and to gain access to restricted social arenas." Concerning this work, I believe African

American women situationally "dressed up" or "dressed down" as a means of survival. How could this potentially be seen archaeologically? Low frequencies of fancier, more expensive clothing fasteners may indicate more inexpensive pieces of clothing being worn at the LJP. In addition to real financial challenges faced by African Americans at the turn of the 20th century, the choice to dress down and reserve fancier pieces of clothing for "Sunday best" attire - an occasion where fancier clothing likely would have been seen and appreciated among other African Americans in a homogeneous space - may be a result of the need to dress "down" in more utilitarian clothing as a survival mechanism against the threat of violence. Moreover, from a preservationist standpoint, African Americans may have been more intentional in preserving their fancier clothing; as a result, they may have

152 lost fancier clothing fasteners at a lower frequency, which would impact the number of such artifacts recovered in the archaeological record.

DRESS AND SELF-EXPRESSION

Within the context of African American women's working lives and the ever- present threat of racial-sexual violence, black women nonetheless incorporated material culture into their appearance in ways that spoke to their desires for self-expression. What stands out about the material remains of sartorial practices is how idiosyncratic the practice of dressing oneself can be. African American women incorporated a diverse variety of material culture into their appearance which had the potential to speak to expressions of individuality among them. This section will examine the wide diversity of material remains recovered from the LJP and how the data is evidence of the desires for self-expression and individuality among African Americans at the site. Contrasting with imagery of white as a symbol of cleanliness, as evidenced by the addition of a white apron to a domestic's daily uniform, is the research surrounding African

American color aesthetics at the turn of the 20th century (Hurston 1934: 24-25; Motsemme 2003: 12-19; White and White 1995: 169-170; Wilkie 199). I posit African American color aesthetics are a way to assert a sense of self-expression that simultaneously worked to counter White American expectations regarding how Black people should dress (plain, unadorned, modest, un-colorful). This interpretation builds on research suggesting that bright contrasting colors became a staple of African American aesthetics during enslavement and was continuously practiced well into the 20th century (White and White 1995: 180, 1995: 72; Hurston 1934: 23). These color aesthetics are most readily seen in the practices of quilting among African Americans, where contrasting prints and colored textiles would be woven together to produce a "dazzle of high-affect colors" (White and

153 White 1998: 147). Moreover, Patricia Hill-Collins writes that the quilting practices among

African American women worked to create an aesthetic that valued contrasting colors as a way to structure and organize beauty aesthetics so "that symmetry comes through diversity" (Hill-Collins 2002:169). As a result, Hill-Collins writes that group aesthetics were "not based on conformity but instead is seen as individual uniqueness that enhances the overall "beauty" of the group" (Hill-Collins 2002: 170). In this way, the addition of a bright colored necklace or bracelet, or the addition of calico or gingham designed buttons to an outfit, could set an individual apart in ways that were distinctly African American as well as set them apart as an individual within group aesthetics trends. Additionally, while it might be tempting to suggest that a colorful necklace, bracelet, brooch, or earrings was purely worn for "Sunday best" church attire, they may have been worn every day to assert a form of individuality within group dynamics. The range of jewelry recovered from the LJP plantation is a testament to the uniqueness that a contrasting pendant, brooch or earring can introduce to an outfit to set oneself apart.

There is a long history of archaeologists interpreting patterns in bead and button color as analogous to varying color symbolism from West African cultures. Often archaeological studies on color aesthetics among African Americans center on either the quest for Africanisms, particularly at sites of enslavement (Stine et al. 1996; Good 1976; LaRoche 1994) or they attempt to interpret the social status and wealth of individuals (Moore 1985; Galle 2004). This section abstains from discussions of both. Kenneth

Brown's (2013) report on the LJP along with the work of his students (Cooper 1989; Brown

2001; Wright 1994; Harris 1999; Barns 1999; Gasaway-Hill 1997; Garcia-Herreros 1998; Bruner 1996; Paup 2001), has already sought to interpret Africanisms, social roles and status at the LJP. One study worth noting (Stine et al. 1996) examined the frequency of bead color among African American assemblages during the colonial, antebellum and 154 postbellum eras. The authors were interested in determining shifts over time in bead color choice among African Americans, primarily from sites in South Carolina and Georgia. The work of Stine et al. (1996), like others (Young 1996; Russell 1997), sought to interpret meaning in the high frequency of blue beads at African American sites. Rather than ask why there existed a high frequency of blue beads at the LJP, this section asks why there was such a great diversity in all colors for both beads and buttons at the site and what, if at all, can be interpreted about African American color aesthetics and the desire for self- expression through dress during this period. In Chapter 4 I outlined the total number of colored beads and buttons from seven cabins at the LJP. In this section, I posit that the data recovered demonstrate a noted diversity in color selection for both beads and buttons from the sampled cabins overall, and a high degree of color variation from cabin to cabin. When analyzing the count of colored beads (Table 5.2) and buttons (Table 5.3), there were high counts for blue, black, colorless (glass), amber, red, and green beads and buttons. Although blue beads were recovered in higher amounts overall at the LJP, suggesting an alignment with the hypothesis of Stine et al. (1996), this was not always the case when examining color variation from cabin to cabin (See Table 4.6).

155

Bead Color Count %

Blue 85 25.53%

Black 76 22.82%

Clear 55 16.52%

Green 37 11.11%

White 34 10.21%

Amber 20 6.01%

Red 16 4.80%

Brown 5 1.50%

Violet 3 0.90%

Amethyst 1 0.30%

Aqua 1 0.30%

Total 333 100.00%

Table 5.2 Table outlines the total bead color count at the seven cabins analyzed at the LJP.

156

Button Colors Count %

Black 63 27.16%

Red 57 24.57%

Blue 35 15.09%

Green 35 15.09%

Brown 11 4.74% multi-color 9 3.88%

Yellow 5 2.16%

Maroon 4 1.72%

Orange 4 1.72%

Amber 2 0.86%

Gray 2 0.86%

Pink 2 0.86%

Purple 2 0.86%

Gold 1 0.43%

Total 232 100.00%

Table 5.3. Table outlines the total button color count at the seven cabins analyzed at the LJP.

157 As Table 5.2 demonstrates, of the 333 beads recovered from the LJP cabins that were analyzed, the beads recovered in the highest frequency were blue beads at 25.53%. However, variation between cabins revealed diversity in bead color choice. While in four of the seven cabins, blue beads were discovered at the highest frequencies, in the other cabins there were higher counts for colorless glass beads (Cabin I-A-1) and black beads (cabins I-B-3 and II-B-3). I suggest that this diversity is evidence of the desire for bright and contrasting colors, indicative of African American color aesthetics.

In addition to the diverse range of color in beads recovered, there was also diversity in the shape of beads recovered (Table 5.4). The majority of the beads were spherical, likely made with the wire-wound or mandrel-wound technique (see Chapter 4), but other shapes were represented. As with the color of beads, the shape of beads recovered varied from cabin to cabin (Table 5.5). Generally speaking, variation between cabins in color and bead shape could denote a desire for individualism rather than investment in any one particular color.

158

Bead Shape Count %

Spherical Bead 170 51.05%

Seed Bead 70 21.02%

Tubular Bead 62 18.62%

Cylindrical Bead 31 9.31%

Grand Total 333 100.00%

Table 5.4 Table outlines bead shape count total data at the LJP.

159 I-A-1 I-A-2 I-B-3 II-A-1 II-B-1 II-B-2 II-B-3 Total Total % Count Bead Shape Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count % Count %

Spherical Bead 25 7.51% 27 8.11% 35 10.51% 9 2.70% 43 12.91% 13 3.90% 18 5.41% 170 51.05%

Seed Bead 22 6.61% 4 1.20% 2 0.60% 0.00% 26 7.81% 8 2.40% 8 2.40% 70 21.02%

Tubular Bead 4 1.20% 43 12.91% 2 0.60% 3 0.90% 4 1.20% 2 0.60% 4 1.20% 62 18.62%

Cylindrical 5 1.50% 9 2.70% 2 0.60% 1 0.30% 8 2.40% 4 1.20% 2 0.60% 31 9.31% Bead

Grand Total 56 16.82% 83 24.92% 41 12.31% 13 3.90% 81 24.32% 27 8.11% 32 9.61% 333 100.00%

Table 5.5. Table outlines bead shape by cabin at the LJP.

160

The interpretation I present above is also evident when examining variation in button color. Table 5.3 demonstrates that of the 232 buttons recovered from the LJP (that were not plain white Prosser buttons, metal, shell, or horn buttons), black, red, blue, and green colors occurred in the highest frequencies. As with the beads, variation within cabins did not always indicate a favoring of one color over another but rather demonstrated variety. Rather than searching for analogous symbolism in colors from West African culture groups, I posit that the diversity in color of buttons at the site are evidence of African Americans at the LJP practicing self-expression through dress in ways that promoted individualism within African American color aesthetics, which placed value in bright colors such as red, green, and blue. In addition to wearing contrasting colors as a means for self-expression, how African American women styled their hair also had the potential to be an act of self-expression.

Hair Combs and Self Expression

A wealth of photographic evidence documents the use of textiles to cover and style hair among African American women and children (Figure 5.3). Textiles are not often recovered in the archaeological record; however, archaeologists do unearth hair combs which have the potential to speak to an aspect of dress practices. Using hair combs were essential to maintaining hair health, and for styling purposes. Of the combs recovered at the LJP, many were plain shaft combs with perpendicular teeth; however, some had roped designed shafts that could have been decorative additions to completed hairstyles. The variation in comb design could signify a difference between the combs used purely for detangling and styling and more decorative combs which could have been used in styles that could afford people the opportunity to distinguish themselves while partaking in the communal dynamics of grooming.

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Figure 5.3 Stereoscope of African American women, and children in front of a house. The Caption reads “These are the Generations of Ham.” Copyright 1895 by Strohmeyer & Wyman Publishers. Curtesy of Cornell University’s Loewentheil Collection of African-American Photographs

A few historical works have focused on the use of hair as a mode of self-expression among African Americans in the colonial and antebellum eras (White and White 1995; Byrd and Tharps 2001:1-24). Much of the scholarly work produced through an Africanism framework, borne from a 1920s anthropological lens, discusses the similarities and differences in hair styling and hair care among

African American and those from West African ethnic groups (Foster 1997; White and White 1995). Additionally, some scholarship focuses on African American hairstyling as a result of the Black Power Movement, which centered thoroughly on Black corporal expressions through hair, as well as through dress (Mercer 1990; Motsemme 2003, Gill 2010). Desires for individuality not only included three- dimensional supplements added to African American bodies such as clothing or jewelry but included altering and styling hair. Hair is a symbol of cultural expression and socialization (Mercer 1990: 249;

White and White 1995; Byrd and Tharps 2001:1-24). The styling of hair and hair-care practices are cultural and social, as a result, they provide "significant 'statements' about self and society" (Mercer

1990: 249). African Americans learned appropriate styles of dress at a very young age while picking

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cotton alongside adults in agricultural fields, while at home watching their mothers cook over indoor hearths, and while attending church alongside their elders, to name a few examples. The socialization of dress was visual. The next section will focus on the social reproduction of dress practices at the intersections of race, gender, and class.

DRESS AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION

Figure 5.4 presents an image of a young African American girl picking cotton bolls within reach of her small arms. The young girl is standing next to a fruiting cotton plant, with stems that stretch above her head. She likely placed the bolls in the sack - made just for someone her size - that is slung over her shoulder and sits near her waist. Like the young child in Figure 5.1, she too wears a gingham dress, fastened with four-hole Prosser buttons and coupled with a matching headscarf. Her outfit likely matched the adult women who were picking cotton nearby. Her clothing, from the gingham cloth that covers her body, from her neck to her wrist and down to her ankles, is an example of the social reproduction of sartorial practices passed from adults to children. She was taught from a young age, like elders before her, to pick cotton bolls. And with that, she was indoctrinated into a system of agricultural production predicated on back-breaking labor completed by black bodies, while simultaneously being socialized to gendered dress practices that shaped what she wore while completing daily tasks.

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Figure 5.4 A late 19th Black-and-white Still Image of a girl picking cotton with a gingham print short gown fastened to four-hole buttons, with a white head scarf [Girl Picking Cotton, MSS1218_B002_I018], Robert Langmuir African American Photograph Collection, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University.

Dress, as a vehicle of identity, self-expression, and public presentation meant that parents could ill afford to send their children mixed messages about what to wear. Whether working in the fields or laboring as a domestic servant Black men and women would have taught their children dress practices and mannerisms that followed the status quo, as to not incite violence from their white employers. However, violence could happen at any time, unprovoked by the victim (Collins 2002:163; Sitton and Conrad 2008: 158). Following emancipation, not only did African American women file complaints against employers demanding withheld wages, they also filed complaints in regards to ill-treatment they and their children received from their employers (Couch 2007:77). Darlene Clark Hine (1998: 21) writes that “The emphasis by black women on community, developed in the slave quarters where they

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taught their children—and especially their daughters—different codes of conduct for their fellow slaves and for the white masters.” These practices continued into the post-emancipation era. African American women who were domestic servants knew firsthand the threats of sexual and physical abuse from their White employers, and the lives that awaited their daughters (Hill-Collins 2002: 163). Within the context of labor at as domestics and as field workers, children at the LJP learned through seeing, as well as being dressed by adults, appropriate dress practices. Adults were “purveyors of culture” who imposed “gender-symbolic dress that encourages others to attribute masculine or feminine gender and to act on the basis of these attributions” on their children (Eicher and Roach-Higgins 1992: 17).

The past lived experiences of children often get lost in the archaeological record (Baxter 2005; Kamp 2001; Sofaer 2007), and scarcely is material culture classified as clothing and adornment – beyond the size of clothing fasteners (Lindbergh 1999) – attributed to the presence of children in the assemblage. However, census records, plantation ledgers, and oral histories do account for the presence of children at the plantation during the antebellum and post-bellum eras (Brown 2012; Wright 1994). For this reason, this section relies heavily on documentary evidence, using historic photographs and widely distributed home-goods catalogues. Mail-order catalogs offered a variety of options for children’s clothing that afforded parents the tools to socialize their children to dress in proper gender roles. In this section I explore the ways race, gender, and class shape and were shaped by the social reproduction of identity through dress practices passed from adults and society to children.

Unlike the image of the young girl picking bolls of cotton alongside adults (see Figure 5.1), Figure 5.5 presents children sitting in line near a fence smiling at each other and the camera. With this photograph in mind, I ask: what were the processes of social reproduction that took place and shaped how the children were dressed – from the gingham print gown with leg of mutton sleeves worn by one girl to the dark-colored coats and trousers worn by young boys? In what ways did race, gender, and class shape sartorial practices transmitted to children from adults and society? More specifically, I am interested in the ways social reproduction can be studied through archaeological evidence. If the "Will to Adorn" is the second most recognizable characteristic of African American expression (Hurston 1934: 24), and the clothing, jewelry, and the stylings of hair chosen by African Americans are "visual vocabularies" of self-making (N'Diaye 2013), then the question becomes: are there material signifiers

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in the archaeological record that can account for how these practices are learned and transmitted? I argue that the buttons, buckles, hook-and-eyes, pendants, chains, beads, and combs are the archaeological evidence of processes of social reproduction that took place at the LJP.

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Figure 5.5 A late 19th century Gelatin Sliver Print of African American children in line near a fence. Courtesy of Cornell University’s Loewentheil Collection of African-American Photographs.

Sartorial practices of self-making exist at the intersection of structure and agency, and are shaped by both larger social forms and the individual (Loren 2001:175; Fisher and Loren 2003: 255). Within this framework, the intersections of race, gender, class, and age are the larger social forms interacting with and constructing processes of self-making through dress. I have discussed earlier in this chapter the ways African American women at the LJP dressed in traditionally feminine clothing.

Here I discuss the ways dominant trends in clothing and hair styling could have been socially transmitted during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As discussed in chapters four and two, mass produced goods and the rise of consumer markets resulted in the creation of ready-made clothing and other consumer goods that could be made with inexpensive materials and unskilled laborers, making them accessible to more consumers (Carnevali 2011:295-297; Mullins 1999: 24; Jones: 2000: 299).

People, varying in racial designations, now had access to mass-produced goods within geographic and economic limitations. In terms of distance, the LJP was located along the gulf coast of Texas within miles of Galveston and Matagorda counties (see Chapter 2), both port counties, where shops in the 167

region had access to various goods. Brown's (2013: 46) archival research revealed that African Americans that lived at the LJP bought goods from the Jordan store, as well as from other shops in

Brazos County, with money and store credit. These stores likely stocked their shops with goods found on the pages of Sears and Roebuck Co. and Montgomery Ward Co. catalogs. Through the pages of the above-mentioned catalogs, people throughout the United States had access to the latest trends in clothing, furniture, hardware, jewelry and much more. In terms of clothing, Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs illustrated trends in dress, as fashion shifted season to season to offer consumers the latest goods and cuts of cloth (Cohen 1940; Paoletti 1987; Tortora and Eubank

2010: 382-383). Trends in feminine and masculine clothing were illustrated on the black and white pages of the late 19th century mail order catalogs as the socialization of gender performance through dress was reinforced through this new avenue of dissemination (Paoletti 1987, 1983; Tortora and Eubank 2010: 382-383; Setnik 2012: 81).

Figure 5.6 is an advertisement for girls’ undergarments found between Sears, Roebuck and Co. advertisements for adult hosiery. It should be noted that the girl depicted is carrying a doll also wearing similar clothing, suggesting that toys too played a key role in the transmission of sartorial practices. It is unknown if any African Americans at the LJP had access to either Sears or Montgomery Ward catalogs; however, the catalogs themselves are a testament to the clothing that was found in stores throughout Brazos and nearby counties, normalizing what constitutes feminine and masculine adult dress as well as gendered sartorial forms for children. The catalogs, in essence, were a tool that circulated gendered and racialized dress practices.

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Figure 5.6 Sear, Roebuck and Co. Advertisement 1895

Hair Combs and Social Reproduction

In addition to socializing children to wear various types of clothing, mothers also would have taught their daughters how to care for their hair. The use of combs, like those recovered at the LJP, would have been central to this process of knowledge sharing. Of the total artifacts examined for this project, 63 hair comb fragments and one hairpin were found in seven of the cabins at the LJP (see Chapter 4). Earlier in this chapter, I discussed how hairstyling could have been used as a form of self- expression among women at the LJP; now I want to look at how hair styling and hair maintenance were used as spaces for the social reproduction of Black womanhood. Hair care among African Americans from enslavement into the late 19th century was communal (Mercer 1990; White and White 1995; Byrd and Tharps 2001:1-24). Hill-Collins (2002: 185) writes about a domestic servant named Willi who would use Saturday nights to care for her daughter's hair. Through the process of washing, coming, patting and braiding Willi would share stories about her experiences and these stories became sources of knowledge production for her girls who learned the realities of Black womanhood at the intersections of race, gender, and class oppression. Additionally, Franklin's (2012) collection of oral histories illustrate early to mid-20th century

African American life in central Texas with detailed references to sartorial and grooming practices. The 169

collection offers a breadth of knowledge regarding the ways dress practices and practices of hair care were socially reproduced as African American women taught their daughters how to dress and style their hair (Franklin 2012: 26). Ruth Roberta (Harper) Fears recounted her youth and the ways her mother and oldest sister would style her hair in plaits (Franklin 2012:121). Moreover, Jewel Williams Andrews recalls: "remember years ago all the ladies wore hats. Even the little girls had a hat on special occasion," (Franklin 2012: 867) which demonstrated the ways women dressed and the ways "little girls" were dressed to mirror them. Hair combs were shared, and grooming practices were completed by African Americans varying in age to each other. This activity had the potential to create a space where knowledge was internalized and shared as processes of social reproduction unfolded.

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CONCLUSION

Clothing for us has had so much to do with the nature of underclass exploited reality. For we have the pleasure (and the way this pleasure is constituted has been a mediating force between the painful reality, our internalized self-hate, and even our resistance) in clothing. - bell hooks (1990: 323)

As I discussed earlier in this chapter, it is through the repetition of daily practices that identities are formed and reshaped (Atalay and Hastorf 2006; Hodder and Cessford 2004). Sartorial practices are daily acts of self-making that form constructions of identity through the quotidian ritual of dressing one's self. I have come to define Black womanhood as an identity formation constructed by sartorial practices of self-making engaged in by African American women at the LJP. In this chapter, an intersectional lens - focusing on the interstices of race, gender, and class - informed my interpretations of the ways practices of dress engaged in by African Americans at the LJP site were shaped by operations of race, gender and class oppressions within spheres of labor, as well as due to the threat of racial violence, the desire for self-expression, and processes of social reproduction. I argue that sartorial practices that construct Black womanhood illuminate the realities of arduous labor, negotiations concerning desires for self-expression, impactful threats of racialized and gendered violence, and processes of social reproduction. In seeking to complicate discussions of sartorial practices engaged in by African American women as either conforming to or resisting larger trends, this project posits that African American women's sartorial practices were shaped and influenced by several interlinking oppressions. I conclude this chapter with a quote from bell hooks, who conceptualized clothing as "the nature of underclass exploitation." The "nature" hooks refers to are the interstices of race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression that shape the past social lives of African American women. Hooks' words capture the complexity of dress practices among African

Americans, the push and pull of conformity and resistance, neither fully encompassing aspects of "pleasure," "painful realities," "internalized self-hate," and "resistance" that collide to form sartorial practices of self-making among African American women.

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Chapter 6: Conclusion

This dissertation examined how race, gender, and class operations of power and oppression, theorized by Hill-Collins (2002) as the “matrix of domination,” shaped constructions of Black womanhood, and how Black women in turn shaped their sense of self through sartorial practices. I examined the latter within spheres of labor, spheres of racialized and gendered violence, in relation to

Black women’s desire for self-expression, and in terms of their roles in social reproduction. While the late 19th and early 20th centuries introduced new economic and social hardships, African Americans’ increased access to mass-produced goods allowed them to fashion identities that variously aligned with and pushed against hegemonic notions of gender. In this work, I conceptualized Black womanhood as a constructed identity that moved fluidly over regions and that shifted over time. I theoretically grounded my use of the term "Black womanhood" within the work of Toni Morrison (1992), who theorizes Black women as "contradiction itself," and with a nod to the work of Patricia Hill-Collins (2000) who theorizes Black women as "outsiders-within." Both of these frameworks theorize Black women and their production of Black womanhood as simultaneously being in alignment with and in disjuncture to hegemonic notions of womanhood reserved for White middle and upper-class woman. Using these frameworks, I created an avenue to discuss African American women's construction of Black womanhood as a process of self-making that "re-inscribes and debunks" (McKittrick 2006) ideologies of the body that speak to and push against histories of oppression that position Black women outside of the realm of hegemonic femininity and womanhood. As discussed in chapter one, this process of re-inscribing and debunking relies on Avery Gordon's (1997) conceptualization of "palimpsest” for a reading of Black women's bodies. With Gordon’s theorization in mind, I conceptualize Black women’s undressed bodies as already having a history written on them that is read, through the color of their flesh and the texture of their hair, as outside the realm of hegemonic femininity and womanhood. This palimpsest operated in the past and continues to shape present formations of Black women’s identity.

Clothing and hair styling used to dress the Black feminine body added another layer atop histories of oppression written onto flesh. The act of dressing speaks to a process of creating and reinforcing a palimpsest that had the potential to counter ideologies that viewed African American

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women solely as chattel and commodities. However, it did not erase histories of oppression written on their flesh. Within my conceptualization of Black womanhood, the multivalent meanings of artifacts that relate to dress practices were embedded in formations of identities (Fisher and Loren 2003; White and Beaudry 2008; Loren 2001; Heath 1999, 2004; Galle 2004; Thomas and Thomas 2004; Beaudry 2006; Eicher 2006). In the introduction of my dissertation I asked the following questions:

1. In what ways were sartorial practices embedded in relations and ideologies of race, gender, and class, and how did Black women negotiate these operations of power and oppression through dress?

2. Given the relationship between fashion and the construction of hegemonic notions of femininity, are Black women’s clothing and adornment practices representative of resistance and/or conformity to these notions? Is there evidence of formations of a distinctive Black womanhood? 3. As African American women moved through various spaces (at home, at work, and in public

spaces) during a time of heightened racial oppression, how were their choices regarding dress influenced? In what ways were their sartorial practices situational to the spaces they occupied?

Through a Black feminist lens, I addressed the questions above by investigating why African American women engaged in particular practices of dress and adornment in Texas from 1865 to 1910. In addition to centering Black feminist theory and intersectional analysis in this work, I also relied on critical archaeological scholarship on gender and race which allowed me to contribute to the existing scholarship on identity through my focus on dress practices.

This project was necessarily one about locating the experiences of African American women in the archaeological and archival record, both of which comprised the data I used. In Chapter two I discussed the challenges researchers face in locating African American women in the past. Building on the autobiographies of Black women in the past (Wheatley 1773; Truth 1850; Jacobs 1861; Copper 1892, 1925; Wells 1895, 1892a, 1892b; Terrell 1940; Guy-Sheftall 1995), along with scholarship by

Black women historians (Hine 1989, 1994, 1998; Terborg-Penn 1998; Giddings 1984, 2008; Bettye Collier-Thomas 1998; Deborah Gray White 1999) and social scientists (Hurston 1934, 1935; Dunham

1971, 1983, 1969; McClaurin 2001; Franklin 2001; Battle-Baptiste 2011; Crenshaw’s 1991; Hill- 173

Collins 1990; Davis 1981), this project highlighted the theoretical and analytical approaches used to address the difficulty in locating African American women in U.S. history. Through a “soldering of the creative and the theoretical” (McKittrick 2015), scholars can move beyond epistemologies of the “fort or barracoon,” (Hartman 2008) and deconstruct and dissect silences and erasures (Trouillot 2012) inherent in the production and dissemination of history via the archaeological and archival records. This practice affords scholars the ability to envision interpretations of Black women's lives that are wholly complex. Through an examination of the material remains unearthed at the Levi Jordan Plantation and related historic sources, this project related a more complex story of how quotidian dress practices shaped and were shaped by the past lived experiences of African American women during a period of social reform that brutally oppressed them. While race, gender, and class oppression presented challenges for African Americans, they nonetheless engaged in the rise of mass consumer culture and answered their "Will to Adorn" themselves (Hurston 1936).

SARTORIAL PRACTICES AND CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF RESISTANCE AND CONFORMITY

In regards to my first and second question, throughout this dissertation, I argued that constructions of Black womanhood were embedded in relations and ideologies of race, gender, and class. Further, Black women, as historical agents, negotiated these operations of power and oppression through dress within the contexts of labor, violence, social reproduction, and just as significantly, desire and creativity.

Given the relationship between fashion and hegemonic notions of femininity, my interpretations suggested that women’s clothing and adornment practices were representative of the complex entanglement of resistance and conformity to these notions. In chapter two I discussed my attempt to move away from the binary notions of resistance versus conformity by acknowledging that African American women and their constructions of identity occupy a space of contradiction. Because Black women are outsiders within, they dress themselves and live their lives in ways that illustrate the simultaneity of being women, yet still outside of normalized ideals of femininity and womanhood; the palimpsest, or layers, of histories of oppression written onto their flesh position them outside of what is deemed acceptable. As I mentioned in earlier chapters, African American women and their dress

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practices were neither fully liberating nor completely oppressive. Rather, their experiences, examined here through the lens of dress practices, were complex negotiations of power and how to maintain dignity and define one’s self (as African American, woman, mother, laborer) as a form of empowerment. In regards to questions about evidence of formations of a distinctive Black womanhood, I want to stress that my conceptualization of Black womanhood positions it as an identity formation that shifts across space and time. Its construction by African American women must be historically contextualized within period-based understandings of operations of power and oppression. I would argue that Black womanhood is distinctive insomuch as African American women, within the multiplicity of their social experiences, have a shared history of oppression written on to their flesh that impacts their constructions of identity. Thus, Black womanhood was both individually and collectively asserted. The evidence for jewelry as a form of adornment, in particular, the use of beads, is one line of evidence that speaks to this dynamic. Rather than highlight a particular bead color or jewelry type that appears in higher frequencies across all of the LJP cabins (see chapter 5), I focused instead on the wide variety of both. I interpreted this as the desire for self-expression among American Americans at the LJP that also falls within traditional African American aesthetics of bold and contrasting color schemes. This African American aesthetic is historically evidenced most widely in Black women’s quilting traditions (White and White 1998: 147; (Hill-Collins 2002:169) and textile trends seen in clothing (White and White

1995: 180, 1995: 72; Hurston 1934: 23). I suggest that the diversity in button and bead color allowed African Americans to distinguish themselves collectively from White Americans while simultaneously expressing individualism.

SARTORIAL PRACTICES AS SITUATIONAL

As African American women moved through various spaces (at home, at work, and in public spaces) during a time of heightened racial oppression, their choices regarding dress were impacted by racialized and gendered violence. As discussed in chapter two, the threat of White terrorism against African Americans increased during the postbellum era. Within the post-emancipation era tactics of social control and surveillance, sumptuary laws similar to those of the colonial era had a resurgence in

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the south. Sitton and Conrad (2008: 158) outlined how practices of “dressing down” became foundational to survival for African Americans as they moved across the Texas landscape. I interpreted this as a possible situational dress practice engaged by African Americans at the LJP evidenced by the high percentage of plain clothing fasteners recovered at the site. While this could reflect restricted market accessibility and poverty, the prevalence of plain clothing fasteners may also be indicative of the desire to “dress down” as means of addressing the threat of racialized and gendered violence. Specific to African American women who worked as domestic servants, dress practices engaged in while laboring in the homes of White employers reflected modesty and cleanliness. The desire to dress in particular ways while laboring in White spaces was in part a response to the threat of racialized and sexual violence Black women faced from their White employers as Black women pushed against controlling images of the hyper-sexualized Black feminine body through modesty. Importantly, it may have also problematically reinforced another controlling image, that of the faithful, asexual “mammy.”

What is important to note is that White homes were dangerous spaces for Black women who were forced to meet the expectations of their White employers in terms of their appearance, including their dress, in order to hold onto their jobs, and to de-escalate their visibility.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

The significance of this study is its objective to de-homogenize African American histories by engendering the past in order to account for the diversity of African American lifeways. Charles Orser

(1998) outlined cultural continuity and cultural change; domination and resistance; and theories of race, gender, and class as three of the four major themes within archaeological studies of African American life and culture. Within adornment studies of African American life from enslavement (Heath 2004,

1998, 1994; Galle 2004; Thomas and Thomas 2004) through Reconstruction (Fitts 1999; Wall 1999; Mullins 1999), archaeologists often posit cultural continuity, cultural change, or domination and resistance as conformity or resilience to social trends set by urban, white, middle-class America.

However, this project complicates interpretations of conformity or resistance by conceptualizing the complexity of African American women’s social positionality as contradictory (Morrison 1992), insomuch as their bodies - and the act of dressing their bodies - have the potential to “produce diverse

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narratives that both re-inscribe and debunk the racial tropes that emit from their bodies” (McKittrick 2000:224). That is, it was neither conformity or resistance, but often was both, and Black women had to negotiate their appearance while considering where and with whom they would be interacting. The application of Black feminist theory in this research advocates for alternative theoretical approaches within the field of archaeology to address the multiplicity and strategies of identity formations in the past. The theoretical significance of this project addresses this lag in archaeological scholarship by asking what an intersectional approach might reveal about the archaeological remains of past identity formations. Such an approach calls into question homogenized notions of identity and experience. As a result, this approach creates a space to explore formations of Black womanhood that were contingent and situational. Their strategies varied, as seen within the sphere of labor, the desire for self-expression, the threat of racial and gendered violence, and through their roles in social reproduction. Using an intersectional lens, I argued that choice in dress could not be reduced to notions of conformity and resilience with respect to hegemonic gender, race, and class norms. An intersectional analysis of sartorial practices, evidenced by clothing, adornment, hygiene, and grooming artifacts demonstrated how sartorial practices were fully implicated in several interlinking factors. Additionally, this project also works to diversify the existing archaeological scholarship on African Americans. Few archaeologists have investigated African American lifeways in the

Southwestern region of the United States during the antebellum and postbellum eras (Kerri Barile 2004). What archaeological research has been done regarding post-emancipation experiences and settlements in Texas (Lee 2014; Kerri Barile 2004; Scott 2016; Prewitt and Associates 2013) has not focused on Black women. This dissertation explicitly examined formations of Black womanhood, and the intersection of race, gender, and class, as a means of writing a more inclusive history of post- emancipation Texas.

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Appendix

ARTIFACT GROUP ARTIFACT CATEGORY TYPE Beer Bottle Juice Bottle Beverage Container Liquor Bottle Milk Bottle Soda Bottle Aluminium Foil Butter Churn Can Canning Jar

Cast Iron Pot Condiment Bottle or Jar Crock Food Preparation & Storage Jar Jug Key Wind Mixing Bowl Oven Dish Reamer Refrigerator Dish UID (Unidentifiable) Utilitarian DOMESTIC Bowl Cruet Fork Knife

Lid Mug Plate Serving and Consumption Platter Saucer Spoon

Tea cup Tumbler Wine Goblet UID (Unidentifiable) Tableware Appliance Stove Parts

178

ARTIFACT GROUP ARTIFACT CATEGORY TYPE Caster Ceramic Figurine

Furniture Part (specify type) Furnishing Lamp Glass Tablecloth/Placemat Upholstery Tack Vase DOMESTIC Yard Flower Pot

Clothes Pin Cleaning Clorox Bottle Container Glass Jar or Bottle Glass Lighting Light Bulb Unidentified UID

Mammal unspecified FAUNAL Avian unspecified

OTHER Money Coin Pencil OFFICE & SCHOOL Writing Supplies Pen Inkwell

Utilized Flake Tool Projectile Point LITHICS Core Core Debitage Flakes and Shatter Oral Hygiene Toothbrush Bleaching Cream Cold Cream

Comb or Brush

Nail File Hair and Skin Care Nail Polish Bottle HYGIENE & GROOMING Perfume Bottle Petroleum Jelly Razor Blades

Cosmetics Lip Stick Case Unidentified UID Mirror Mirror

179

ARTIFACT GROUP ARTIFACT CATEGORY TYPE Harmonica Reed Music Vinyl Record Marble Doll or Doll Parts Toys Toy Gun LEISURE & PLAY Minature Dish Set Car

Tobacco Snuff Bottle Unidentified UID

Medicine Bottle HEALTH CARE Medicinal Dropper Lead Shot Ammunition Cartridge Case FIREARMS Bullet

Gun Gun Parts Mule Shoe Animal Husbandry Harness TRANSPORTATION Tack

Automotive Car Part

Unidentified UID UNIDENTIFIED Container Glass Jar or Bottle

BOTANICAL Plant Seed Earring Jewelry Brooch Bead Hook and Eye Button Clothes Fastener Cufflink Rivet CLOTHING & ADORNMENT Hair Comb Hair Accessory Hair Pin Sole Shoe Grommet Suspenders Buckle Unidentified UID

180

ARTIFACT GROUP ARTIFACT CATEGORY TYPE Brick Wire nail

Cut nail

Hinge

Drawer/Cabinet Pull Roofing Tile Architectural Tile Door Knob Kkey Window Glass Staple STRUCTURAL Fencing Wire Copper Pipe Plumbing Spigot Insulator Electrical Knob and Tube Light Fixture Unidentified UID

Rake Agricultural Hoe Plow Saw Hammer

Hook

TOOLS & HARDWARE Wrench

File General Screw Chain

Spike Washer Nuts

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Vita

Permanent address (or email): [email protected] This dissertation was typed by Ayana Omilade Aisha Flewellen

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