“White Gloves, Whiter Women: Debutante Balls and the Reinforcement of White Femininity in the Post-War American South” by Allison Gordon Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts In the Department of History at Brown University Thesis Advisor: Kelly Colvin April 2019

Photo courtesy of Abigail Thomas, a South Carolina debutante

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Acknowledgements

This project would not have been possible without so many people in my life. Regarding scholarship, I extend my thanks to the helpful archivists and librarians at the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center and the Lewis H. Beck Archives at the Westminster Schools in Atlanta. I would additionally like to thank Professor Naoko Shibusawa for her guidance over the last year. To each of my amazing interviewees, thank you for inviting me into your life and your history. Your candor, wit, and willingness to remember made this project come alive. Benie, I appreciate you corralling the troops and making things happen. Without you, my thesis wouldn’t have a voice.

I also want to acknowledge several Brown professors who have encouraged my love of learning and storytelling: Professor Luther Spoehr, Professor Ralph Rodriguez, Professor Hilary Levey-Friedman, and Professor Catherine Imbriglio. Thank you for your warmth, generosity of spirit, and that forever push to keep going.

A special shout out also goes to my roommates and best friends. Thank you for listening to me talk endlessly about this project and for making my senior year so incredible. I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else. I also want to extend a huge thank you to my family for always supporting me. I would not be where I am today without y’all. Mom and Dad, thank you for always nurturing my curiosity and providing for my education. You have given me the best gift in the world. I will never forget it.

Finally, I am tremendously grateful to my thesis advisor and mentor, Professor Kelly Colvin. You were always there to offer me guidance and suggestions at various stages of my writing and research, helping me with everything from citations to interview questions. But more than anything, I am so thankful for the hours spent in your office talking and talking and talking. Over the last few years, we have discussed everything from hoop skirts to the not-always-historical issues women in 2019 face.

Thank you for believing in me since my sophomore year. You are truly the reason I decided to write this thing in the first place.

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Table of Contents

Introduction…………………………………………….……. [3]

Structure and Methodology ……………………………………[4] Personal Connection ……………………………………[5] Background and Secondary Information………………………………[6]

The Atlanta Debutante World…………………………………………….… [11] Step One: Where Do You Belong? ……………………………………[11] Acceptance ……………………………………[17]

Step Two: Preliminaries ……………………………………[23] Newspaper Announcements ……………………………………[24] Invitations ……………………………………[27]

Step Three: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions ……………………………[30] Dress……………………………………[31] Escorts ……………………………………[37] Parties……………………………………[41]

Conclusion…………………………………………….……. [54]

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Introduction

Arriving back in Atlanta, there are always clues to remind me I am no longer in New

England. In the airport, slow speaking people move at slow paces from terminal to terminal.

Driving on the interstate, I am greeted by images that aggressively promote Southern nostalgia.

Women in hoop skirts sell sweet tea and Coca-Cola in advertisements, plantation weddings are hugely popular, and “Old South” remains a celebrated fraternity party at the University of

Georgia. When I return home, I can feel some of my old habits returning. My vowels become rounder and slower. I call my friend’s parent’s Mr. and Mrs. Sometimes, I worry that I will be swallowed up by the South and its old fashioned ways and its steaming hot pinwheel of people.

Because even in cosmopolitan and fairly liberal Atlanta, certain tropes of an older Southern identity stubbornly persist. Perhaps most tellingly, the sweeping grandeur of the still-ubiquitous debutante ball locks my city deep in the past.

There is a dearth of literature concerning debutante balls, with even less published information about the Atlanta social scene. But why, an academic may ask, is this lack of scholarship important? My thesis grapples with this very issue; I hope to prove how “frivolous” rituals like debutante balls are valuable tools to deepen our historical understandings of race, gender, and power. Through my secondary research, I discovered that this “frivolous” label often applies to specifically feminine activities and realms. As such, academics have overlooked these subject areas. I hope to fill in the blanks by piecing together a collage of primary sources: newspaper announcements, scrapbooks, archival documents, and oral history interviews.

Although my thesis touches on several questions, the primary one is this: what can deb balls tell us about the constructions of race and gender in the post-war American South? I argue that as the turbulent racial landscape in the 1960s accelerated, debutante balls became more 4 extravagant to scaffold said hierarchy. Moreover, debutante balls reveal understudied aspects of

Southern femininity, social inclusion/exclusion based on class, and the general nostalgia of whiteness that often permeates the region. Together, these elements promote a literally whitewashed vision of Southern identity and prop up patriarchal power.

Structure and Methodology

The structure of this thesis matches the chronological progression of the debutante ball itself. Following an initial section concerning the ritual’s background, I move into the Atlanta deb world specifically. Beginning with a section entitled “Where Do You Belong?,” I describe who is invited to participate and how these acceptances were received. Following this foundational information, the thesis moves into “Preliminaries.” This section deals with the importance of newspaper announcements and the role of invitations, both for individuals and for clubs. Finally, in “Decisions, Decisions, Decisions,” I turn to the role of dress, the escort selection process, and the parties themselves. This section, the longest of the three, is meant to make a broader argument about the energy and financial resources that fueled this rite of passage in the South.

Regarding methodology, I have pieced together a wide variety of sources. First, this thesis leans on close readings of various society pages from The Atlanta Constitution, many of which were written by Yolande Gwin, a prolific journalist and cultural force who is addressed later in my work. I also interviewed three women who debuted in the 1960s in Atlanta (Benie,

Bitsy, and Elizabeth), and one woman who debuted in the 1960s in Augusta, Georgia (Susan).

These phone interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity, with all conversations taken on the record. I have chosen to use only the first name of each of the women I interviewed. One woman requested a pseudonym because her first name is recognizable. 5

In addition, my thesis also includes primary sources from the archives at the Kenan

Research Center at the Atlanta Historical Society, scrapbooks from one of my participants, and the 1961-1968 yearbooks (Lynx) from the Westminster Schools in Atlanta. Finally, I was fortunate enough to attend a debutante ball in person on November 23, 2018. This event will be referenced in my conclusion as I connect the balls from the postwar period through the contemporary.

Finally, I want to reference another aspect of debutante balls that did not make it into this thesis: African American cotillions. Following some secondary research, I learned that Jack and

Jill of America and the black sorority scene are largely responsible for African American deb balls in Atlanta.1 Accordingly, the membership process for Jack and Jill mirrors that of selective debutante societies. One young woman I spoke with joked that she “was born into it” because both of her parents had also been members. In his book Our Kind of People, historian Lawrence

Otis Graham recalls meeting parents on the outside of the Jack and Jill network frustrated by the ultra-selective admissions process.2 Ultimately, there was not enough room in this thesis to properly analyze these kinds of deb balls. Therefore, I implore future historians to pick up where

I have left off, giving African American debs the attention that they deserve.

Personal Connection

Although I did not come out as a debutante, my position as an outsider-insider in this elite, Southern world awards me insight to the subculture I describe in this thesis. I am an insider insofar as I have had a great amount of exposure to this world, being an upper-middle-class

1 Jack and Jill of America, Inc., is a membership organization of African American mothers with children ages 2 – 19 dedicated to nurturing future leaders through educational development, volunteer service, and civic duty. For more, see Lawrence Otis Graham’s Our Kind of People (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1999). 2 Lawrence Otis Graham, Our Kind of People: Inside America’s Black Upper Class, (New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 1999), 31. 6 white female. Moreover, I attended a large private school, thus affording me experiences similar to many of the women I write about here. My entire family is from the Southeast, and while I was ensconced in this research, I even learned that some of my cousins and my maternal grandmother made their debut. However, I remain an outsider as a Jewish woman who was not a member of the Atlanta Debutante Club or other cotillion organization. Moreover, I chose to leave the South after graduating high school, severing many ties to the sorority-focused, Buckhead world of Atlanta debutantes. I believe that this intersubjective space, which signifies the interplay between the two identities of insider and outsider, allows me to enter the cultural arena of the debutante while still analyzing it objectively.3

Background and Secondary Information

Although the historiography surrounding debutante balls is scant, there is some secondary literature both on them and other feminine coming-of-age rituals. According to Jennifer Edson

Escalas, the process originated with the English who adopted the word “debutante” from the

French court system.4 Queen Elizabeth I began the custom in Britain by formally “debuting” eligible young women in her palace. Three centuries later, Queen Victoria morphed the process into an event more closely resembling its current manifestation. 5 Under Victoria, debutante balls came to promote larger societal norms present in the Victorian era about women, femininity, and girls’ access to the public sphere. At this time, wealthy girls were cloistered in the domestic sphere, guarded by parental figures. They were only formally allowed to be seen in public after

3 For more about this intersubjective space, see Deborah Elizabeth Whaley’s Disciplining Women: Alpha Kappa Alpha, Black Counterpublics, and the Cultural Politics of Black Sororities (New York: SUNY Press, 2010). 4 Jennifer Edson Escalas, “The Consumption of Insignificant Rituals: A Look at Debutante Balls,” Advances in Consumer Research 20, no. 1 (January 1993): 709–16. 709. 5 Escalas, 709. 7 their “debut” at age 18.6 Today, deb balls remain culturally salient as “one of the few remaining

Western ceremonies that formalizes coming of age and the entrance of a young woman into the matrimonial market.”7

According to Vendela Vida in her Girls on the Verge: Debutante Dips, Drive-bys, and Other

Initiations, daughters of the haute bourgeoisie began to be included in deb balls during the

Industrial Revolution. This was to modernize the social strata of deb balls without eliminating it altogether.8 It was during this era that many of the contemporary signifiers we attribute to debutante balls emerged. Participants began to dress in all white and also immersed themselves in learning strict codes of etiquette like proper dancing and the curtsey. Ultimately, debutante balls became both an aspirational goal for non-royal families and a sign that they had accessed a high social elite through their daughters.

As I will explore more fully later, the performative aspect of debutante balls largely matches nuptial celebrations. Women walk down the aisle with their fathers, are passed off to a pre- arranged escort, and dress in pure white. Like weddings, deb balls are meant to evoke glamor and status. According to historian Karal Ann Marling, “the true 'belle' cut a fine figure on the dance floor by virtue of her grace, beauty, charming manners, and knowledge of the intricate steps through which she cavorted in figure dances managed by men.”9 Today, that ceremony has remained more or less unchanged. As the young deb strolls across the ballroom, every move is deliberate, “to let the guests get a better view of her dress, of her hair, of her smile, of her."10

6 Escalas, 710. 7 Escalas, 711. 8 Vendela Vida, Girls on the Verge : Debutante Dips, Drive-Bys, and Other Initiations (New York: St. Martin’s, 1999), 57. 9 Karal Ann Marling, Debutante: Rites and Regalia of American Debdom, CultureAmerica (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 13. 10 Vida, Girls on the Verge, 64. 8

According to Vida, the ritual of the debutante ball crossed the Atlantic in the late nineteenth century, when wealthy Americans traveling abroad on grand tours adopted the custom from the

European aristocracy. Just as the haute bourgeoisie in Europe claimed high social status by debuting their daughters’ bodies, Americans looking to climb the social ladder used the debutante ball as both an announcement of their exclusivity and, through strategic marriages and networking, a way to remain on top. The ritual was a vehicle for wealthy families to introduce their daughters to the “right sort of people,” inoculating their children in a class—and race — restricted marriage market.11 In the South, debutante balls existed in an even more complicated web of connections; they were used to distinguish different social groups within the white community, connoting who had been “well-born” before the Civil War.12

Although the balls faded in England and most of America during the feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, they not only continued in the American South, but flourished. At a time when it was often difficult to gather enough debutantes for presentations in the Northeastern

United States, debutante balls remained popular in the South, a seemingly puzzling trend. In

Atlanta, the focus of my thesis, this trend is especially obvious, coming as it does in the middle of the Civil Rights era. At a time of rapid urban expansion and increasingly turbulent politics, the city added two more debutante clubs in the 1960s, the height of the balls’ decline elsewhere.

As Vida has aptly noted, “debutante balls have always thrived in the South with its love of lineage and social customs.”13 However, I argue that this trend is more complex—and sinister—than simply a love of tradition. The debutante ball, a seemingly innocuous rite of passage for young women, was actually a tool to uphold a racial hierarchy. In a time when white

11 Vida, 64. 12 Escalas, “The Consumption of Insignificant Rituals,” 709. 13 Vida, Girls on the Verge, 58. 9 identity felt particularly threatened, it makes sense that Southern debutante balls became more and more excessive.

Figure 1 Atlanta in the 1960’s ; Don Ceppi/Scenic South Card Co. [Public domain]

Antebellum Roots

It should be noted that the stereotypical Southern belle, one who is hospitable, sweet as sugar, and pretty but not too sexy, emerges largely from the antebellum period. Historian

Catherine Clinton has argued that Southern hospitality was born out of a need to protect white supremacy.14 In the antebellum period, plantation mistresses were integral in promoting the myth that slavery was a form of humanitarianism. In Confederate propaganda, white women were depicted as angelic and kind; they helped to “civilize” slaves.15 Ultimately, a woman’s sweet femininity, today a cherished custom in the South, originated as a way to defend slavery and mask its horrors. After completing my secondary research and interviewing various former debs,

I learned that “Southern hospitality” is deeply ingrained in the etiquette component of debutante balls, something Clinton hints at but never fully addresses.

14 Catherine Clinton, “Women in the Land of Cotton,” in Myth and Southern History, 2nd ed (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989). 118. 15 Clinton, 118. 10

The pageantry of days gone by, cemented in images of chivalrous beaux and simpering women, continues to occupy a great deal of nostalgia for many Southerners. Perhaps the most familiar template for the Southern belle stereotype, even almost eighty years after its release, is

Margaret Mitchell’s famous novel, Gone with the Wind. Released on June 30, 1936, the book became an instant bestseller, with more than a million copies sold in its first six months. Since then, more than 25 million copies of the novel have been bought around the globe, reproduced in over 155 editions and twenty-seven languages. 16 Two years later, the movie adaptation launched the story to staggering new heights. This film has been viewed by millions around the world, and it deeply informs how the world sees the South and the women who live there.

Only in recent decades has the story of Scarlett O’Hara begun to face criticism.

According to Ta-Nehisi Coates, it is not a mistake that Gone with the Wind is one of the most read works of American literature. He contends that its popularity, not only in the South, but across the country, emerges “from a need for palliatives and painkillers, an escape from the truth of those five short years in which 750,000 American soldiers were killed, more than all other

American wars combined, in a war declared for the cause of expanding African slavery.”17 In other words, GWTW has helped to smooth over the rough edges of white supremacy, transforming the antebellum South into a storybook instead of a bloody caste system.18

16 Helen Taylor, Scarlett’s Women: Gone with the Wind and Its Female Fans (Rutgers University Press, 1989), 1. 17 Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy (New York: One World, 2018), 64. 18 Despite these criticisms, however, GWTW’s influence continues to hold power. According to Helen Taylor in her Scarlett’s Women: Gone with the Wind and Its Female Fans, this obsession made sense in the post-war period. People craved a “strong, independent nuclear family in a self-sufficient home” after the war (10). Moving into the 21st century, though, the admiration of Scarlett O’Hara and the plantation has been difficult to shake. Taylor is especially candid in her book; she recognizes how historically and politically biased GWTW is, yet recalls being “spellbound” by the “heavy air of nostalgia and regret for lost love, home, ways of life, and personal values” (13). While attempting to critically examine the work at an analytical level, she “admits to feeling swept along by its extraordinary power” (13). Here, Taylor offers insight into the book generally (its astronomical success, why it became so popular, etc.), but she also demonstrates the power of nostalgia, especially in its Southern form. 11

Ultimately, if GWTW popularized a specific vision of white Southern femininity, then I would argue that the most overt form of this vision’s maintenance is the debutante ball. The affective stereotype of the Southern belle is fed and nurtured by this ritual with its emphasis on beauty and poise. A rite of passage, deb balls help connect families across generations and preserve longstanding ideas of what it means to be a Southern woman. This goal of conservation becomes especially apparent when studying the Atlanta deb scene.

THE ATLANTA DEB WORLD

“Piedmont Driving Club is the very sanctum, the very citadel of White Establishment Atlanta.” -

Tom Wolfe, A Man in Full

Step One: Where Do You Belong?

In 1960s Atlanta, debutantes premiered at three main clubs: the Atlanta Debutante Society at the Piedmont Driving Club, the Cherokee Club, and the Phoenix Society. Each occupied a different social standing and possessed a distinct reputation. In the 1960s, the Cherokee Club

Debutante Society and the Phoenix Society were formed to complement the long-established

Atlanta Debutante Club formed in 1911. Again, it should be noted that at a time when many debutante societies were drying up across the country, Atlanta was adding more. This uptick matches the increase in the Atlanta population. That being said, though, this trend remains extraordinary given the ritual’s plummeting numbers elsewhere.

Of these three main clubs, the Phoenix Society was the newest and smallest. Founded the same year that Atlanta surpassed the one million mark in population, this society was established to address what one society columnist described as a “a pressing social need”: the debut of more 12 well-to-do young women in the city.19 The name Phoenix was no accident. The mythical bird is also on Atlanta’s official seal, representing reemergence from ashes, referencing the city’s Civil

War past.20

Next, the Cherokee debutantes made their official debut in 1964. Their presentation marked “the first time in Atlanta's social history that a private club had its own debutante club within its membership."21 By most accounts, the Cherokee Club was PDC’s closest rival for dominance in the country club scene. Located on the prolific Grant Estate (a landmark on the

North Side of the city), Cherokee served as an alternative space for the moneyed to flock.22 Like

PDC, the Cherokee Club did not admit any black or Jewish patrons.

Finally, we turn to Atlanta’s oldest debutante club, the Atlanta Debutante Society at

Piedmont Driving Club (PDC). Founded in 1887, PDC was originally called the Gentleman’s

Club with the sole purpose of “driving fine horses” for the gentlemen who belonged there.23 As the 1900s progressed, the Driving Club became a place for those who had been “born well before the war” to carve out a distinct segment for themselves among the general population. 24 In a growing city teeming with new demographics, these Atlantans needed a way to flaunt their wealth and stand out.

Architecturally, PDC is also tinged with antebellum grandeur. Built around a millstone that survived the Civil War, this country club is a rare Atlanta institution that can viably claim

19 Yolande Gwin, “Phoenix Society Makes Presentation of Debutantes,” The Atlanta Constitution, December 9, 1984. 20 Gwin, “Phoenix Society Makes Presentation of Debutantes.” 21 Yolande Gwin, Yolande’s Atlanta: From the Historical to the Hysterical (Atlanta, Ga: Peachtree Pub Ltd, 1983), 238. 22 Gwin, 237. 23 Gwin, 237. 24 Gwin, 237. 13 antebellum roots.25 Overall, with its pre-1900 founding, exclusive membership pool, and architectural treasures, PDC became a favorite playground for Atlanta’s leading businessmen and social elites. As a result, in the words of a society reporter, “The PDC is synonymous with elegance. Within its walls are some of the most fabulous events in all of the South.”26

As evidenced in its Annual Reports, Piedmont Driving Club promoted a certain form of genteel masculinity that persisted well into the 1960s. For example, in 1964, the corporation decided to host a cocktail party to open the new season instead of a ballroom function. In his letter to members, the president explained that “this year, because of no ballroom, only the members—no wives—are invited. It may well be that this will become the custom.”27 Although women could attend formal events, the “boys only” back rooms kept them from all major decisions. This patriarchal attitude is similarly reflected in the 1965 Annual Report. According to the pamphlet, a new ballroom was erected for “Ladies, Boys, and Girls.”28 By lumping women in the same category as children, there is no question that PDC infantilized them.

In the midst of racial turmoil, PDC provided a space where existing racial and gender power structures could be nurtured and thrive. For context, despite the self-given title as the “city too busy to hate,” discriminatory government policies drove many black Atlantans to protest in the 1960s. Momentous events in the Civil Rights movement began right at the beginning of the decade in Atlanta. On October 19, 1960, Martin Luther King, Jr. was arrested during a restaurant sit-in in Atlanta along with fifty-one others. He was sentenced to four months in jail, but after

25 Emma Edmunds, “The Piedmont Driving Club: A World Where People Seem Very Much Alike,” The Atlanta Constitution, August 30, 1981. 26 Kathryn Grayburn,“78 Year Old Club Is Still Young at Heart,” The Atlanta Constitution. Found in Piedmont Driving Club Newspaper Clippings: 1896-1967, MS 409, Box 3, Folder 5, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 27 Piedmont Driving Club Annual Reports, MSS 409, Box 1, Folder 2, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 28Piedmont Driving Club Annual Reports. Atlanta History Center. 14 intervention from then-presidential candidate John Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy, he was released.29 Moreover, students in Atlanta were among the first to organize, due to the vibrant communities of Clark Atlanta University, Spelman, and Morehouse. These young activists responded en masse to calls for action against segregation. Under the leadership of Herschelle

Sullivan and Lonnie King, they organized a sophisticated and durable campaign.30

As the Civil Rights situation intensified, membership to PDC became even more coveted.

A notoriously clandestine organization, it is difficult to access any information about how PDC’s members were selected or what actually went on behind its formidable gates. In one Constitution article, a club member responded to a reporter that he didn’t “want to be negative. But we are not seeking any coverage. The club is looked on by members as an extension of their living room.

Very private.”31 This idea that PDC operated like a “living room” was repeated in several testimonies from members. In a separate magazine article, another patron defended the Driving

Club against accusations of discrimination: “We love our club, and we like it the way it is.

People criticize it, but we don't really care. It's part of our lives and it was part of our daddies’ lives. Some of my best friends are Jews and some of my best friends are blacks. But the club is an extension of our living rooms, you see, and our living rooms are private, like the club.” 32 For the most part, the well-to-do in Atlanta brushed off the club’s discriminatory policies, either embracing them or accepting them as a part of life. And as the 1960s burned on, the Atlanta

Debutante Club at PDC remained the most coveted spot to premiere well-to-do daughters.

As such, the prestige associated with debuting remained a goal for many of Atlanta’s white elite. Benie, a 72-year-old white woman who grew up in Atlanta with one sister, explained

29 Adam Fairclough. Martin Luther King, Jr. (University of Georgia Press, 1995), 58. 30 Stephen Tuck, “Mass Protests during the 1960s,” in New Georgia Encyclopedia, September 9, 2004. 31 Edmunds, “The Piedmont Driving Club.” 32 Stephen Birmingham, “The Clubs Griffin Bell Had to Quit,” The New York Times, February 6, 1977. 15 that debuting at PDC was her mother’s dream for her daughters. “The Cherokee Club was where

‘new money’ went in Atlanta… but the Driving Club was for the old elite. They wouldn’t take new, unproven people,” she explained. According to Benie, the Driving Club did not have to “try so hard” with their deb ball. While other clubs put on fancy, glitzy shows, PDC “didn’t have to do that. They were the Driving Club, after all.” Although Benie did not deb herself, her sister

Deedee made her debut in 1968. 33 Despite not making a formal debut, Benie did join the Junior

League at 19, another marker of white femininity. Gaining entrance to that group was also challenging; “you had to be asked, vetted, interviewed, and then maybe maybe you could be accepted,” Benie explained.

As Benie’s story suggests, it is impossible to separate debutante balls from other social clubs like sororities and the Junior League, exclusive institutions which also promoted a specific vision of femininity. Many women who were debutantes went on to participate in the Junior

League, and the strict rules were remarkably similar between the two groups. For example, in an article “Age Pains over 40? Not for Junior Leaguers,” columnist Margaret Turner explains that when Junior League members turned 40, they became “sustainers.” Accordingly, a “sustainer must abide by the rules and give up League work … so the younger members can take over.”34A new cycle of coiffed, former debs would then enter the League, taking over their duties. It is also worth mentioning that of all the debutantes I interviewed, all were also members of sororities at

33 Benie’s sister, Edith Phillips, (known by friends and family as “Deedee”) was a member of the debutante class of 1968-69. Like her sister, Deedee also attended Emory University. She was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. According to Yolande Gwin, Deedee met many European students while she was debuting and thus planned to travel Europe after her debut. According to Gwin’s writeup, “Ex-Debutante Still on Merry -Go-Round,” Deedee visited Beethoven’s home, a German fraternity party, and the original printing press after she was presented to society. After traveling Europe, Deedee reflected on her debutante experience in The Atlanta Constitution with great enthusiasm. “I’m home now, and I did not realize that being a post-debutante could be so wonderful. Just think of all these parties I've been to, and the two big Christmas balls at the Cotillion Club and the Assemblies already planned. It is just as great!" 34 Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977, MSS 791, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 16 their respective colleges. As I will detail in a later section, much of sorority life mirrored debutante culture, and vice versa.

Why, then, focus on the debutante ball instead of Junior League or sororities? According to sociologist Dean Knudsen, “for American parents who are conscious of their social status, the debut of a daughter is an event of singular importance. This occurrence is probably unmatched as an indicator of the family's elite social standing, particularly in those cities with well-established upper classes and long family tradition.”35 Knudsen reached this conclusion after conducting a survey of approximately 2,000 white women in a city in the South (unnamed, with a population of 100,000) between 1961 and 1965. He found that “for families without upper status traditions, the event represents the culmination of extensive and expensive efforts to attain high status.

These efforts may involve years of private schooling and training, with one recent estimate of the cost of bringing a daughter to deb status set at $50,000.” 36

For these reasons, I have chosen to focus on the debutante ball instead of other white, feminine institutions like sororities and Junior League. While these institutions are significant and also deserve further scholarship, I argue that the debutante ball is the most telling for my purposes. As a stand-alone, introductory rite of passage, debutante balls combined these traits of white femininity and intensified them to the highest magnitude.

ACCEPTANCE

35 Dean D. Knudsen, “Socialization to Elitism: A Study of Debutantes,” Sociological Quarterly; Columbia, Mo., Etc. 9, no. 3 (Summer 1968): 300–308. 308. 36 Knudsen, 303. 17

The social hierarchies in Atlanta were quite powerful in the postwar years, and gaining entrance to elite country clubs and debutante programs could be exceedingly difficult. As the population of Atlanta exploded in the 1960s, membership to PDC became trickier than ever, especially during a time of racial anxieties when white elites were shoring up their privilege. In one cartoon, a satirist expresses the difficulty of even getting a gym locker in the PDC building.

“Son, aside from my controlling interest in the Corporation; the place in Nassau; the Town

House; the Lodge at Sapphire and the Match, I’m leaving you my locker at the Driving Club,” says a man from his deathbed.37

Figure 2 Cartoon from Piedmont Driving Club (Piedmont Driving Club Collection, 1907-1998. Atlanta History Center.)

Obviously, this cartoon is an exaggeration; however, many people were of the opinion that belonging to the right club was essential to “make it” in Atlanta in the 1960s. Benie, who we met earlier, explained that her mother wanted her daughters to debut so that they could meet “the right kind of people” in Atlanta. “My family was new to Atlanta,” she continued, “my dad was a banker with Trust Company and my mother became friends with some old Atlanta folks. She

37 Piedmont Driving Club Collection, 1907-1998, MS 409, Box 1, Folder 2, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 18 realized how important it was for Daddy’s business and her social standing to be included in old

Atlanta instead of new Atlanta… There was a lot of blackballing and exclusion then. There’s less of that now.” Elizabeth, a junior at Vanderbilt when she debuted at Piedmont Driving Club in

1964, had a similar experience. She explained that looking back, “life growing up in Atlanta and in the South was very prescribed. There were certain ways of doing things.” Now that she lives on the West Coast, she “feels freer to do my own thing a little more. I had to escape from that.”

In addition to being completely white, the debutante societies also excluded Jewish

Atlantans. This discrimination is a small piece of a larger prejudice that existed in the city’s country clubs. Although there were never any formal rules regarding the practice, Piedmont

Driving Club did not have a Jewish member for most of its existence. According to New York

Times journalist Emma Edmunds, “two top club officials were unable to name any” Jewish members in the 1970s.38 In a separate article, another woman explained that “I'm sure we have some Jews in the Driving Club… but I couldn't tell you who they are. Frankly, I've never really thought about it till now.”39

Therefore, it is unsurprising that Jewish girls, even among the wealthiest set, were excluded from the debutante societies within this country club world. Benie recounted the exclusion of a Jewish girl she knew as a given for Atlanta at the time: “of course, she was not invited to the party or the debutante club. But I remember, her family threw her a party the weekend before. And they put on this huge show, to show that they could do just as well as this snobby group that didn’t include their daughter.” For context, Jews in Atlanta occupied a precarious position in the postwar period. Despite their flight from the city following the 1913

Leo Frank lynching, possibly the most notorious case of anti-Semitism in American history, the

38 Edmunds, “The Piedmont Driving Club.” 39 Birmingham, “The Clubs Griffin Bell Had to Quit.” 19

Atlanta Jewish population steadily rose following the Great Depression.40 The group accelerated after World War II, perhaps because racial prejudice shielded some Jews in the South from overt discrimination. However, Jewish and black discrimination is irrevocably linked, and the periods of the greatest racial violence coincided with spikes of anti-Semitism in the city.41 Thus, it is no surprise that elite clubs, seeking to cement their privileged racial status, excluded Jews from participation in important rituals like the debutante balls.42

Private school affiliation was yet another metric used to determine who could be admitted to debut. Bitsy, another woman who grew up in Atlanta during this period, attended the same school as Benie, the prestigious Westminster Schools. Situated in the center of Buckhead, still considered the wealthiest section of Atlanta, Westminster saw to the education of the most elite white Atlantans. In our interview, Bitsy explained that not just anyone could become a debutante. First, a young girl had to be approved by the doyennes of Atlanta society. These women, gatekeepers to an elite world, were on the lookout for markers of prestige, and

Westminster enrollment definitely counted. This perception of white women as gatekeepers fits into the larger historiography of antebellum women as guardians of tradition.

The importance of private school education became manifest in several of my interviews.

With a Westminster diploma, one’s chances of being “tapped” to debut were high. Bitsy recalls this phenomenon, explaining that nearly every girl from Westminster was asked to debut,

“except the ones who were married, of course.” However, because her mother was not a

40 Mark Bauman, “Jewish Community of Atlanta,” in New Georgia Encyclopedia, March 15, 2004, https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/jewish-community-atlanta. 41 Bauman, “Jewish Community of Atlanta.” 42 On a personal note, discussing my thesis with family members, I learned that exclusion of Jewish girls from debutante societies bled into other Southern states as well. Chatting about my thesis with my 88-year-old grandmother, a North Carolina native, I learned that Jewish families created their own system of debuting their daughters, with the “top” girl from each town going on to debut at the North Carolina state stage. “Melinda [my second cousin] hated it,” my grandmother told me over the phone. “Aunt Karen really wanted her to do it, wear the white dress and everything,” she explained. “But wow, she did it kicking and screaming.” 20 debutante, Bitsy still had to prove herself worthy of selection. “Mother was determined to get me in,” Bitsy explained. “There was only one person at the time, Mrs. Murdoch Equen, who chose the Atlanta debutantes, so we had to get on her good side.”43 Susan, the debutante from Augusta, recounted meeting Westminster girls for the first time when she was a freshman at Emory. She described them as part of a very specific tribe. “The girls from Westminster came from a more rigid place, a place more oriented to money than the small towns outside Atlanta,” she explained.

Without a mother in the deb society, gaining entrance could be precarious for aspiring debutantes. Much like all-male networks facilitated entry into the right fraternities and jobs and clubs, all-female networks provided access to an elite world. This social reality is made apparent when studying the list of debutantes published in The Atlanta Constitution. As evidenced in the

1967-68 register of names, many of the young women were daughters of former debutantes.

Some even had grandmothers who were also members of the Atlanta Debutante Club.44 In her article, “Tuesday Bridge Club Scores in Second Debutante Deal,” Society Editor for The Atlanta

Constitution Yolande Gwin shed light on the importance of familial connections in the clandestine world of debs. In the piece, she highlights a Buckhead bridge club who chose to debut 15 daughters of their collective 32 children.45

Yolande Gwin was an important character in the city of Atlanta, especially in the postwar period. A celebrated society columnist, she rose to prominence after covering the Gone with the

Wind premiere. Although the film premiered in 1939, Gwin remained a hallmark of the Atlanta social scene well through the 1960s. As Society Editor, she translated elite ceremonies for the

43 It is worth mentioning that here, Bitsy uses this woman’s husband’s name. Although clearly the habit of elite Atlanta in this age, this choice is still an interesting one, especially in 2018. 44 Yolande Gwin, “Atlanta Debutantes Listed,” The Atlanta Constitution, April 2, 1967. 45 Yolande Gwin, “Tuesday Bridge Club Scores In Second Debutante Deal,” The Atlanta Constitution, August 25, 1968. 21 masses, writing “about Atlanta society, about debs and brides-to-be, and the brides’ impossible mothers. She profile[d] Southern movers and shakers, and uncover[ed] the Machiavellian maneuvers used when jockeying for social position.”46 Her articles about deb balls were incredibly detailed, describing dresses, guest lists, and complicated social dynamics. Gwin imbued these practices with meaning, and for this reason, she was an integral part of the ecosystem that needed to remain strong and vibrant for the social set in Atlanta to maintain power.

As a society editor, Gwin tended to conform to traditional, heteronormative ideals, writing about women as marriage prospects and homemakers. However, she did not fall into the pattern of many other journalists of the time, writing solely about the joys and tribulations of childbearing and child raising. Instead, “she chose...to view the family as a social unit. and to describe Atlanta and its people in their relations to each other on the social level, joined or separated on the bases of family background, income, education, church and club memberships, and social interests."47 For this reason, Gwin is perhaps a more complex figure than she initially appears. Her articles add credence to the idea that debutante balls were more than a fun, coming of age ritual. Although some may brush Gwin’s work off as frivolous or unimportant, I maintain that she was a translator for this elite set and promoted a certain brand of white Southern femininity.

Interviews with former debutantes, the same women Gwin would have zealously covered, echo the notion that “coming out” represented a marker of success and inclusion in Atlanta.

According to Benie, families could fall into terrible decline if their daughters were not invited to

46 Michael Ross, “Yolande Gwin’s Book Offers Us All a Chance to Relive Her Escapades,” review of Yolande's Atlanta: From the Historical to the Hysterical, by Yolande Gwin, The Atlanta Constitution, September 25, 1983. 47 Gwin, Yolande's Atlanta.. 22 debut. “I remember one girl,” Benie said, “her parents hated each other and slept in separate bedrooms. But they did not divorce until their daughter was accepted into a debutante club; it was that important to keep up this facade.” For a long period, daughters with divorced parents were excluded from debuting. “We had a class of 82, and the one girl not invited was because her parents divorced,” Benie explained. A family had to be impeccable to even begin to consider that their daughter might be allowed entry.

Before I go on, I must point out that there was a charitable aspect to the coming out process. According to Gwin, “despite the existing idea by some people that debutantes don’t do anything but go to parties, it is interesting to report that the 1911 group’s object was chartered primarily to furnishing and maintaining a ward at the Home for the Incurables.”48 In the post-war period, debutantes also volunteered and raised money for the Egleston Children’s Hospital.

Today, young women’s parents donate money to Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta before the party. These charities are strikingly similar despite the passage of time. They are child-related across the timespan, lending credence to the idea of a maternal Southern lady who does not involve herself in non-lady things.

Moreover, my archival research, interviews, and secondary sources reveal that very little focus was actually directed at philanthropy. None of the newspaper announcements I encountered told which girl raised the most money or devoted the most hours. And in my interviews, it seems that the dress, invitations, and social codes were much more memorable in the experience of former debutantes.

48 Yolande Gwin, “Driving Club Gives Annual Party,” The Atlanta Constitution, January 2, 1973. 23

Step Two: Preliminaries

“As a woman of rank, you were only in the papers three times in your life: your debutante, your marriage, and your death. That was it.” - Benie, interview subject

Before the balls occurred, Atlanta debutantes utilized two platforms to show the world they were coming out: society announcements and elaborate invitations. First, they submitted their names to the debutante registrar, a list of the privileged few who had made the cut to debut. This list was then published in their local paper, or, if they lived within the city’s perimeter, the society section of The Atlanta Constitution. First made in 1911, the announcement continued to carry a significant social and cultural legacy well into the postwar period.49

In addition to taking care of society announcements, debutantes also set the stage for their parties with elaborate invitations. Months before the event occurred, women sent out individual invitations alerting guests of the timing, the dress code, and the theme. The various clubs also sent out invitations for the formal presentations. Significantly, these events were club-only events; no unapproved guests were allowed.

NEWSPAPER ANNOUNCEMENTS

Although only a tiny slice of the Atlanta population participated in deb balls, newspapers made sure to dedicate significant space to them. In local papers, debutante’s names, photographs, parents’ names, and sometimes their addresses were printed to celebrate the rite of passage. The

Atlanta Constitution published many spreads of deb parties, including the famed Bal de Salut presentation at Piedmont Driving Club. In one spread, we see prominent couples in attendance, girls and boys laughing with one another, and grandparents on the dance floor. This photo collage also includes a photo of Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr. attending the event. Many forget that Ivan

49 Gwin, “Atlanta Debutantes Listed.” 24

Allen, the celebrated two-term mayor largely credited for being on the “right side” of the Civil

Rights Movement, was also a dedicated member of the Piedmont Driving Club.50 At a time when the city was (sometimes literally) burning and the club did not accept black or Jewish members,

Allen served as the grand marshal of the debutante presentation. Moreover, his wife Louise acted as the chief organizer of the Bal de Salut. Their son, Ivan Allen III, was even the chosen escort for the president of the debutante club in 1959.51 The Allen family’s commitment to this ceremony sheds light on the important role these balls played at the nexus of Atlanta society.

Again, these events are more than frilly anachronisms. The movers and shakers of Atlanta did more than look on in bemusement. They played a significant role.

These newspaper photo spreads from the 1960s cemented the boundaries of acceptability for white Atlanta. Images centered around feminine performance and heteronormative coupling, with chaperoned men and women laughing and flirting with one another. In one article about a party that took place at Six Flags Amusement Park, there are gleaming photos of smiling young couples, gazing adoringly at one another. In the article, the girls are described as “eyestoppers” wearing “whimsical flats of every conceivable shade, square-toed in the height of fashion and amazingly decorated.”52 As the piece draws to a close, the enchanting quality of these young women is exaggerated: “the Atlanta Debutante Club members will remember their first visit to

Six Flags. The personnel at the fun park will remember them, too. They came, they saw, they captivated.”53Articles like these promote the idea that these young women symbolized the best of

50 Other significant members of PDC in this period included, but were not limited to, Robert Woodruff, CEO of Coca-Cola and another civil rights icon; the board of trustees at Emory University; the ambassador to Australia; and the Vice President of Cox Enterprises. For more, see Emma Edmunds, “The Piedmont Driving Club: A World Where People Seem Very Much Alike,” The Atlanta Constitution, August 30, 1981. 51 Atlanta Debutante Club Scrapbooks, 1959-1995, MSS 747, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 52 Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977, MSS 791, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 53 Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977. Atlanta History Center. 25

Atlanta. As the city’s climate became increasingly turbulent, innocence was celebrated, smoothing over the rougher edges of reality.

Newspaper articles also demonstrate the all-consuming nature of coming out. At the beginning of every deb season, Yolande Gwin would list the names of the debutantes and their respective clubs in her society column. As the season progressed, she would outline the three clubs’ weekend events. To take just one example, Gwin highlighted the packed deb schedule in a

1967 column: “the Bal de Salut Friday, June 9, at the Piedmont Driving Club, initiated parties for members of the Atlanta Debutante Club. The preceding evening, Thursday, June 8, the debutantes being presented by the Phoenix Society, were honored at a tea-dance at the Capital

City Country Club. The Cherokee Debutantes will be honored Wednesday, June 14, at a reception in the afternoon, and a ball in the evening at the Cherokee Club.”54 Clearly, these ceremonies occupied a great deal of energy and imagination across the city.

Susan, another woman who debuted in 1964, “came out” in Augusta, a small city three hours away from Atlanta. Her debutante party was announced in the local paper, with vivid description. In “Debutante Tea at the Governor’s House,” every person who attended Susan’s party and their dates were listed. Moreover, the scenery was described in great detail: “The entrance of the historic building was flanked with topiary trees made of pink carnations and green velvet ribbons. The hall stairway was decorated with garlands of smilax interspersed with nosegays of pink flowers…On the hall table was a seven-branched candelabrum holding an arrangement of pink flowers and burning tapers.”55

Despite these formalities, Susan insisted that “nobody could really say they were excluded completely, because if you did not make a debut, a friend could invite you along.” Only

54 Yolande Gwin, “Debutante Parties Fill Social Calendar,” The Atlanta Constitution, June 11, 1967. 55 Benie’s 1960s Scrapbook. Atlanta, GA. 26 in retrospect, when one of her sons was an escort in Augusta, did Susan see the effects of exclusion: “I remember one of his friends, this really darling girl, wasn’t included at the

Symphony Cotillion. She was Asian. I remember her crying, saying ‘I’m just as good as they are.’ And I felt so badly; I said ‘of course you are’ … It’s such a closed society, it really is. But when I came out, I don’t remember feeling like anyone was left out. But I’m sure that some were, and did feel resentful.” It is significant that Susan only noticed this exclusion many years after her debutante ball occurred, when she was less involved in the party planning process.

INVITATIONS

In addition to fighting for coveted spot in the society pages, young women also paid a great deal of attention to invitations. More than just mail, these invitations were used to express a debutante’s unique personality and assert her family’s wealth. As the 1960s burned on, these invites became increasingly extravagant and eye-catching. Additionally, the various clubs sent out their own invitations for the formal presentations. It is significant that at Piedmont Driving

Club, the debutante presentation was a members-only event. No one from outside this small world was allowed to attend.

Individual Invitations

Signifying her elite status began with the quality of invitations that a debutante commissioned for her individual celebration. These formal invitations set the tone of a party, and as the 1960s progressed, they became increasingly elaborate. In one society article, Yolande

Gwin recounted a box filled with straw that functioned as an invitation. Painted around the rim of the box were images of the girls debuting. Upon opening the “invitation,” the lucky recipient received a custom cowboy hat for a party that was “a little bit of country and a lot of rock and 27 roll.”56 In her piece, Gwin marveled at the creative invitations she had seen in Atlanta. They

“ranged from A to Z. One year, a man dressed in formal attire wearing a top hat and carrying a cane and wearing white gloves delivered invitations to the doors of those invited." There were also telegram invitations, huge barrels of candy, and holiday themed Santa Claus invitations.57

When asked about her own invitations, Susan recalled her mother printing them at Tiffany.

“They looked just like wedding invitations,” she added. Elizabeth, the Atlanta deb we met earlier, told me that her father wrote her invitation, “because he had really beautiful script. That was fun because my whole family was involved, in that sense.” In fact, Elizabeth’s favorite memories around her deb ball mainly concern the familial aspect of the ceremony. “The sweet thing about it to me was you got to be presented with your father. That felt really special, was really a lovely part of it,” she explained.

Elizabeth was not alone in this thinking; many of the debs I spoke to remember their fathers being an integral part of their experience. This paternal thinking emphasizes the quasi-marital component of the deb balls. In one Atlanta Constitution article, writer Annie Lou Hardy highlights these similarities. After the young women “line[d] up in a solid phalanx of youthful beauty,” they were greeted by their fathers holding white gardenias.58 Then, with trumpets blaring, the Master of Ceremonies announced the young woman’s family name and she descended the steps with her father.59 Following this announcement, the traditional father- daughter dance began. After a few turns around the dance floor, the young woman passed from father to escort, similar to how she would be passed off at her wedding.

56 Yolande Gwin, “Debutante Party Invitations Are Often Fantastic Creations,” The Atlanta Constitution, June 7, 1984. 57 Gwin, “Debutante Party Invitations Are Often Fantastic Creations.” 58 Annie Lou Hardy, “Debutante Club Makes Formal Bow to Society,” The Atlanta Constitution, November 2, 1959. 59 Hardy, “Debutante Club Makes Formal Bow to Society.” 28

The relationship between debutante and father is celebrated in many articles from the time period. For example, in an Atlanta Constitution article entitled “Fathers Date Daughters,” we see an entire photo spread dedicated to a Father’s Day brunch at the Piedmont Driving Club. This event took place before the formal debutante ball as a way to honor paternal relationships. Like the other events of the deb season, the brunch was replete with festive details and thematic elements. On the tables, place cards were “checks for 10,000 wishes” signed by the fathers of the girls.60 Ultimately, all of this patriarchal attention suggests the importance of the deb ritual to whole families. These events were more than just a marker of a woman’s entry to the marital market. Altogether, these balls suggested that the women were, in some ways, property of their fathers.

Club Invitations

In addition to these over-the-top individual invitations, the debutante clubs also sent out formal invites to their members. For members of Piedmont Driving Club, embossed, creamy white envelopes arrived outlining the details of the Halloween (later renamed Harvest) Ball.61 At the beginning of every season, PDC also sent out a calendar of events for the coming months. In

1961, the “Autumn’s Oughta” calendar outlined the various Fall happenings, including football games, junior parties, and various performances. Significantly, guests could bring non-members

60 Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977, MSS 791, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 61 Piedmont Driving Club Collection, 1907-1998, MS 409, Box 1, Folder 1, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 29 or out of town guests to all of the Fall events except the debutante presentation. In the newsletter,

PDC explained that “the Halloween Ball, of course, is a club function.”62

Figure 3 Halloween Invitation for Club Members Only (Piedmont Driving Club Collection, Atlanta History Center).

I argue that the Harvest Ball at PDC remained private for two reasons. First, by keeping non-members out, young women were “protected.” This determination fits into a larger attitude which pervaded Atlanta country clubs. One of the goals behind the construction PDC was to establish a safe, carefully chaperoned place for upper-class white families to socialize. As the city around them modernized and old social barriers began to be challenged, husbands felt comfortable bringing their wives and children to PDC “without fear of meeting with improper characters.”63 Second, restricting who could view these young belles added a sense of grandeur

62 Piedmont Driving Club Collection, 1907-1998. Atlanta History Center. 63 Edmunds, “The Piedmont Driving Club.” 30

to the event. Excluding “regular people” from admiring the debutantes was another way to use

white women’s bodies as a status symbol, conveying wealth and propping up white supremacy.

Step Three: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

At every turn of the deb process, young women and their families were faced with

fraught decisions. These choices concerned proper attire, both for the presentation and individual

parties, their choice of escort, and the type of party they would host to celebrate their debut. These

choices were not resolved in a vacuum; every decision was made in the context of weighty

cultural traditions and societal expectations. Fortunately for my research, they were also

extremely well documented. Moving into this section, it is important to reiterate that while

debutante balls were drying up in most other parts of the country, they intensified in the South.

The complicated decision-making process I outline below only enhances this idea.

DRESS

In addition to designing the perfect invitation, debs were also tasked with choosing the

appropriate dress to reflect their elevated status. According to historians Cele Otnes and

Elizabeth Pleck, although gowns gather their meaning from commercial rather than spiritual

sources, they can serve as “vessels of sacred power.”64 The adulation of deb dresses certainly

speaks to this idea. Historian Sheryl Nissinen has similarly argued that a dress is more than an

object to assist in “looking perfect.” For a young woman, a dress can “be utilized as an amulet to

assist her during her rite of passage.”65 In a highly coded event like a debutante ball, women,

whether they knew it or not, used their dresses to demonstrate their family’s status and lineage.

64 Cele Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck, Cinderella Dreams: The Allure of the Lavish Wedding, Life Passages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 82. 65 Sheryl Nissinen, The Conscious Bride: Women Unveil Their True Feelings about Getting Hitched (Oakland, Calif.: New Harbinger Publications, 2000). 87. 31

This context explains why women devoted so much money, time, and energy into finding the perfect dress.

The debutante costume—both then and now—is a white formal gown worn with long, white satin gloves. With its long skirt, a debutante’s dress could easily be mistaken for a wedding gown. In the post-war period, families shelled out money for both a formal debut gown and an individual party dress. Often, when girls hosted multiple parties, they purchased multiple gowns.

Bitsy bought her presentation dress at a large department store in downtown Atlanta, and the gown continues to occupy a grand space in her memories of that time. “Oh lord, you wouldn’t believe it,” she told me all these years later. She went on to describe the dress in breathless detail; it was scalloped on the bottom, covered all over with French lace. She dreamily remarked it was “sort of off the shoulder, and set with 33 pounds of beads, pearl beads and bugle beads…

The back was all tulle, mushed together, over the hoop skirt, from the back of the waist,” she explained. Bitsy added that every girl wore a unique dress. “They were all white, though?” I asked. “Oh lord yes! Lord yes! They had to be white,” she emphasized. Bitsy also told me that everyone donned kid gloves, high above the elbow. However, it was clear what the sartorial centerpiece actually was, and how deeply it connected with Southern femininity: “The dress was just gorgeous, it looked like Scarlett O’Hara,” said Bitsy. Here again, deb balls evoke the sweeping sense of grandeur around Gone With the Wind.66

There are several reasons why bridal white is significant for deb dresses. First, this color is emblematic of girlhood and innocence. According to historian Carol Wallace, “when fashion

66 This connection to Scarlett O’Hara is also found in the archival invitations I referenced earlier. In one fall calendar from Piedmont Driving Club, members are invited to attend a GWTW screening, complete with designated buses to the Fox Theater. These invitations were from 1967, the same year that Martin Luther King, Jr. organized the Poor People’s Campaign in Atlanta. Again, the country club world, and specifically the presentation of debutantes, intensified as the 1960s progressed to match the burgeoning civil rights movement in the city. For more on the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta, see Adam Fairclough’s Martin Luther King, Jr. (University of Georgia Press, 1995). 32 changed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, soft, pale fabrics came into style, especially for young girls. The formality and grandeur of the eighteenth century gave way to what historians sometimes call an 'age of sentiment.’”67 Moreover, white came to symbolize domesticity and the home as a distinctly feminine sphere. Queen Victoria, the first to popularize the white wedding dress, “brought her wedding still closer to a purely domestic event.” 68 Instead of wearing “queenly” colors (royal blue, purple, or red), Victoria dressed like a young maiden. In doing so, she was presented to her people as simply a bride, instead of a monarch. In an age of romanticism, her subjects loved her for it. Additionally, the color white serves as an important class symbol. An especially impractical shade, white makes every pucker, crooked hem, or basic flaw exceedingly obvious. 69 More than any other color, white requires impeccable maintenance.

In the South, white dresses also carry a special weight specific to the landscape. White clothing is connected to cotton, a behemoth of an industry with antebellum roots. White dresses were worn by plantation mistresses on special occasions, and this emblem survived into the postwar period. For example, in one spread in the Women’s News and Society Section of the

Atlanta Constitution, we see the queen of the Cotton Ball. She is dressed in pure white, standing amidst stalks of cotton blowing in the breeze. According to the author of this piece, “cotton, always playing a major role in Southern life, again rises as the star.”70 Looking at this image, the young queen could easily be mistaken for a deb. Her dress is “brilliantly white, [and] it has a floaty, full skirt with a Grecian draped midriff and a bodice jeweled with white beads and pink palettes.”71

67 Carol Wallace, All Dressed in White : The Irresistible Rise of the American Wedding (New York: Penguin Books, 2004). 31. 68 Wallace, 35. 69 Wallace, 35. 70 Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977, MSS 791, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 71Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977. Atlanta History Center. 33

As previously mentioned, deb dresses closely resembled wedding dresses with their full skirts and white color. In fact, many debutantes from this period went on to re-wear their dresses for their weddings. Bitsy explained that “when I married, we took the tulle out of the dress and put in taffeta, and more lace, and of course more beading. Both our daughters also wore it for their weddings.” This transformation from debutante dress to wedding dress carries with it important symbolic and emotional weight, again connecting debutante ceremonies, matrimony, and the importance of sexual purity. Like Bitsy, Benie also connected the debutante costume to a wedding gown, recalling her sister’s white gown. “A lot of the debs would re-wear their dresses for their weddings… My sister did that. She wore this sleeveless ball gown, and then added sleeves from the same silken wool for her wedding dress. That wasn’t uncommon unless you just had tons of money,” she explained.

As objects, debutante dresses conveyed a shared experience, passing from sister to sister, mother to daughter. Bitsy explained that both of her daughters wore her deb-dress-turned- wedding-dress for their own presentations. Elizabeth, the Atlanta deb who we met earlier, told me that both of her sisters also wore her deb dress for their own parties. Susan, the Augusta deb, added that the shared legacy of her dress is one of her fondest memories from her deb: “After my debutante party, my mother offered my dress to another girl, and she wore it both for her debut and for her wedding. So many other brides have worn it, too, which is really nice. The dress has been worn on and on and on.” Like Bitsy, she also purchased her dress at a large department store, which she described as “the place. Our favorite thing to do was get dressed up on Saturday afternoons and go there.” Although her debutante was more than 50 years ago, she remembered the dress quite well: “My deb dress was some kind of sample wedding dress, come to think of it. 34

It had beads on it, a really pretty dress. It wasn’t strapless, but off the shoulders. And it had layers of taffeta.”

As aforementioned, Susan was not from Atlanta, but from a much smaller city, Augusta.

In our interview, she told me that debuting in Augusta differed from “coming out” at one of the major Atlanta clubs for several reasons. She explained that “where I lived in Augusta, people lived very far away from each other, so the deb balls were a way for people to get together, introduce one another.” Accordingly, parents would bring their children into Augusta from the surrounding small towns to meet and mingle. For this reason, Susan’s debutante ceremony perhaps carried even more weight in preserving social structures. Formal “coming out” ceremonies served as one of the only opportunities for people from these rural communities to congregate (and whether they realized it or not, to reaffirm their whiteness). “The smaller towns copy the things they do in Atlanta; it’s a lot richer there. So our debutante presentation looked a lot like theirs,” Susan explained. This idea that Atlanta was seen as the standard bearer for deb ball adds credence to my argument that as the “Empire City of the South,” Atlanta is the most important and useful city to study for my thesis.

As the 1960s progressed, a new anxiety over hemlines came to dominate the debutante circuit. The Phoenix Club went so far as to formally dictate the length of a debutante’s party dress. The president of the Phoenix Society explained that “the girls may wear any color or material they desire, but the length of the dresses must be the same, and they must be a graceful length. An inch and a half above the knee is about the shortest they can wear and maintain and appearance of good taste and gracefulness.”72 According to one Yolande Gwin write-up, dresses had to remain tasteful, “regardless of how pretty the legs or knees of the debbies may be.”73 In an

72 Yolande Gwin, “Phoenix Debutantes Ready To Hold That Hemline!,” The Atlanta Constitution, June 2, 1968. 73 Gwin, “Phoenix Debutantes Ready To Hold That Hemline!” 35 accompanying cartoon, one can see young women wearing different length dresses labeled

“mini” and “maxi” and an austere woman measuring their calves. A committee donned with rulers stands behind her, also judging.74 This anxiety over hemlines (connoting sexual purity and maintenance of the status quo) intensified as white Atlanta felt increasingly threatened by a changing cultural landscape.

Figure 4 Men vs. Women (The Westminster Schools. Lynx. Lewis H. Beck Archives.)

The white dress’s symbolism also permeated other rites of passage in postwar Atlanta. For example, each May Queen at the Westminster Schools dressed in all white. 75 Chosen from the student body, this young woman was meant to portray “both in her attitudes and activities the combined qualities symbolized by the placement of the eight girls on her court.”76 In one multipage spread, the May Day Court Representatives were photographed wearing white gloves and pure white ball gowns, similar to deb dresses. Like debs, they also held flower bouquets. 77

These full body photos stood in marked contrast to the boys’ photos in the back of the same

74 Gwin, “Phoenix Debutantes Ready To Hold That Hemline!” 75 As previously mentioned, Westminster was, and continues to be, the most elite private school in Atlanta. Situated in the wealthiest part of Atlanta, Westminster enrollment was viewed as a form of a social capital in the 1960s. 76 The Westminster Schools. Lynx. Atlanta, Ga.: 1968. Lewis H. Beck Archives. 77 The Westminster Schools. Lynx. 36 yearbook. In most of the boy’s Senior Representatives photos, only their faces were visible. And when their whole body was photographed, they held sports equipment or textbooks. Clearly, there was a difference between the presentation of the men and women at this elite school.

Unlike their male classmates, whose bodies telegraphed action and vigor, the women were decorative, meant to be displayed as virginal totems of white femininity.

ESCORTS

Once her name was added to the register, her dress chosen, and her invitations sent, each debutante had to select a suitable date from the city’s eligible young men. In the South, debutante escorts were interchangeably referred to as “marshals.” This soldierly language is worth further examination because it promulgates the idea that these young women were in need of protection.

In one Atlanta Constitution article, the headline announces “Marshals to ‘protect’ debutantes at first dance.” In this piece, the author jokingly writes that these young men “study martial law for

Bal de Salut.”78 Although the author is poking fun at the marshal label, the idea that debutantes needed “protection” harkens back to a sinister history. Both before and after the Civil War, and indeed well into this time period, white women’s bodies were seen as “threatened” and in need of protection by white patriarchs.79 This discourse cast Southerners into easily definable roles: white women as vulnerable victims, black people as dangerous, and white men as righteous avengers.80

78 Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977, MSS 791, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 79 In the South, any claim of sexual contact between black men and white women could result in mob violence and murder. Well after Reconstruction, race mixing was considered to be the greatest threat to Southern honor and way of life. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, nearly 25% of lynching victims were black men accused of sexual assault. For more, see Ashraf H.A. Rushdy, American Lynching (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2012). 80 Ashraf H.A. Rushdy, American Lynching (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2012), 95. 37

It is no secret that debutante balls were created to introduce young women to the “right sort” of young men.81 Vendela Vida has labelled debutante balls an “anti-Cinderella story” largely because of this date selection process. Accordingly, when “a young woman is presented as a debutante, society (in this case, high society) is being told she is of a good family and eligible for marriage.”82 There is no need for a Prince Charming to scour the town looking for her. She is right there in front of him, printed in the debutante brochure. According to Vida, many parents “harbor a not-so-veiled hope that the ball will ensure their daughters will date and eventually marry someone of their social class."83 For this reason, it was paramount that debs choose men from the right kind of families as their escorts.

It is worth mentioning that escorts were rarely the debutantes’ boyfriends. Because the young men were asked to serve as escorts several months in advance, it was considered too risky to invite one’s beaux, for at this age, “you never know.”84 Even today, debutante committees strongly discourage debs from inviting boyfriends to be their escorts. Additionally, boyfriends were not encouraged because the point of the debutante ball was to expand one’s social circle by meeting new young men. According to Vida, for a “deb to have an escort she's already involved with would be like bringing one's own food when dining at a four star restaurant."85

Primary sources bear out the idea of the deb ball as a dating pool. Susan told me that one of her parents’ goals for her debutante ball was to expand her social circle and introduce her to new young men who lived outside of her town’s square limits. “I think I really did meet a wider group of people, both older and younger, so that was interesting and fun…” Susan recalled.

81 Cynthia Lewis and Susan Harbage Page, “Secret Sharing: Debutantes Coming Out in the American South,” Southern Cultures 18, no. 4 (2012): 6–25. 82 Vida, Girls on the Verge, 57. 83 Vida, 58. 84 Vida, 64. 85 Vida, 64. 38

“Later, one of the boys I met who went to Harvard invited me to his dance there.” For her, the debutante ball felt like “a growing up process, compacted over a series of events.” She added that the social skills she learned from her deb ball carried over into college, explaining that “it probably did give me more confidence when I went back to Emory for fraternity parties and all that.” Here again, debutante balls were a way for young women to become socialized, albeit in a highly chaperoned and sanctioned space. “It was good to meet them that way, looking back, instead of in a less supervised way,” Susan reflected.

For her Augusta debut, Susan remembered choosing her date a bit randomly, although he did come from a prescribed social set of her parents’ friends’ children. She recalled the process as somewhat fraught, saying, “I didn’t have a boyfriend at the time, so I picked him. I’m sure it made the girl this boy was with mad, but it didn’t amount to anything. He was the son of one of my mother’s friends, and seemed like a safe choice.” Upon further reflection, Susan added that she wished she had invited another boy who ended up liking her very much. “He went to Georgia

Tech and worked his way through college, paying for it himself,” she remembered. “Being my escort would have meant something to him, I think.” Here, Susan nods at a theme expressed in much of the literature: being invited to a deb ball could be a ticket to the elite, a way to literally dance your way into an entire social status. Exclusion signified one’s status as an outsider.

Similarly, Atlanta debutante Elizabeth told me that the purpose of the deb ball was to make young people at ease in social situations with one another. “Atlanta was a village, then,” she explained. “It wasn’t hyped up like it is today. And the deb ball did make me feel more connected to the city. Through it, you met people you had heard of, but maybe hadn’t met specifically.” For Bitsy, choosing a date was a more stressful exercise; “I was in between people all of the time, so to find two dates, one for the fall party and one for the spring party, I had to 39 search around. I was dating one of them, and the other was someone I had known for a long time, a nice boy from the neighborhood.” Bitsy paused, as if to emphasize that he was of the appropriate social set.

Benie echoed this escort logic, explaining “the goal of the deb ball was to impress people.

And to meet your husband, of course. Eleanor Roosevelt came out at 18 and we always talked about that.” She explained that the men included had also been vetted; “they told us that they didn’t let just anybody in.” Benie added that one of the reasons she chose not to debut was her age. She skipped a grade and graduated from Westminster when she was only 16. “I couldn’t come up with a list of 10-11 boys to ask to my debutante ball! I only knew one or two.” The fact that she did not have a deb ball largely for lack of suitable partnership speaks to the notion that the function the balls served was to pair off Atlanta’s elites.

Perhaps more than any facet of the ball, choosing a date was the most highly scrutinized aspect from the outside. A deb who deviated from the prescribed set of norms could be maligned and cast out of the group. In “Debutante Dines with 24 Men,” Yolande Gwin voiced her judgement of Adrienne Anderson, a young woman who invited two dozen men to her party.

When the other “debbies” found out she had invited so many men, “it cause[d] a mild panic or at least to sever all ties of friendship with the blonde Miss Anderson, their SUPPOSED friend. Ha! friend indeed. Corralling 22 men for a dinner party for herself. Imagine that.” Imagine that indeed!86

And yet, Gwin concluded her article with a note of admiration for Anderson. She advised her readers to “try if possible to put yourself in Miss Anderson’s shoes. Walking into a room and having 22 men (her father and grandfather made it equal 24) all in black tie, and looking divine,

86 Yolande Gwin, “Debutante Dines With 24 Men,” The Atlanta Constitution, July 14, 1968. 40 leap to their feet as you entered. It was just like being Miss America or Queen Elizabeth.”87

Gwin even listed the names of all 22 men at the end of her article, clearly to satiate the curiosity of Atlanta’s old guard. Perhaps ironically (or sadly), while the deb ball formed part of a female world of ritual, the definition of success or failure largely depended upon the attendance of men.

PARTIES

Following the preliminary steps to the ball, the actual party became the object of debs’ fantasy and imagination. It would be hard to overstate the amount of energy and money that went into these celebrations. In many ways, it is the parties, more than any other aspect of the deb process, that demonstrate the great wealth of this social set.88 Parents could spend thousands of dollars on these private parties; in Girls on the Verge, Vida provocatively refers to them as

“dressed up dowries.”89

As previously stated, Atlanta in the 1960s was a city profoundly affected by the civil rights movement. As the years passed, individual parties became increasingly extravagant to display the strength of the white elite. In 1959, the Atlanta Debutante Club decided that girls could only have two parties each. A bit ironically, this decision did not serve to tamp down on the parties’ extravagance. On the contrary, the limit on parties put more pressure on each girl to make sure her special night really delivered. “Every type of party has been given during the past year. There is about nothing left to give but a flying party to the moon,” Gwin wrote in 1967.90 In her “Sky is Limit for Deb Fetes”, Gwin developed this idea even more, explaining that the 1960s

“will rate a special section in the city’s social history under the ‘D’ file - debutantes.”91 Even

87 Gwin, “Debutante Dines With 24 Men.” 88 Vida, Girls on the Verge, 68. 89 Vida, 68. 90 Yolande Gwin, “1967 Merry-Go-Round Slows Up,” The Atlanta Constitution, December 31, 1967. 91 Yolande Gwin, “Sky Is Limit For Deb Fetes,” The Atlanta Constitution, August 9, 1964. 41 during the socially lesser “little season” (June through September), Atlanta’s social calendar was dominated by deb celebrations. In her weekly column, Gwin explained that “during the coming week, the party tempo will be slower as compared to the past four weeks in June, when there were at least two parties a day. And now what happens? Only seven for this coming week.

Imagine just having seven party dates for one week.”92 Imagine that indeed!

It should be noted that deb balls had not always been such a prolonged affair. Only in the postwar period did families begin to host individual parties in addition to the formal, group ceremony. According to one calendar, there were eight dances, three suppers, four brunches, four morning coffees, 15 luncheons, three lake parties, four afternoon teas, two open houses, six evening parties, three swimming parties, and 16 variety type parties within one season.93

Juggling all of these events could understandably be stressful. Susan remembered that “you had to clear the date on a calendar with the group.” Accordingly, “the parents would get together and coordinate” so that no one had conflicting parties. After seeing how much time people spent at these events (let alone planning them), it becomes impossible to dismiss these parties as superfluous. Piecing together these celebrations and dissecting their larger meaning deeply informs our understanding of this group’s priorities: creating an insular culture of privilege that was white, wealthy, and patriarchal.

Themes

As the 1960s progressed, Atlanta’s elite families increasingly felt under pressure to deliver unique themes and help their daughters stand out in the saturated deb world. As mentioned, this intensification dovetailed with the rise in racial strife the city was experiencing.

92 Yolande Gwin, “Deb Party Tempo Moves Slower,” The Atlanta Constitution, July 5, 1970. 93 Gwin, “Sky Is Limit For Deb Fetes.” 42

According to one Constitution article, themes became “the IN thing on the social calendar.”94 It should be noted that this obsession with themed parties was not just limited to debutante balls. In

Benie’s scrapbooks, there are references to various themed sorority and fraternity parties constructed around pirates, the beach, even diamonds. Moreover, in an earlier scrapbook, Benie preserved a clipping from a summer party with a Confederate theme. The party took place in

August of 1961, and was designed to mimic August of 1861. According to the accompanying newspaper article, “A confederate theme was carried out in the decorations and favors. The table was centered with a miniature gate draped with ivy and a model cannon. Confederate money marked the individual plates.”95 Confederate-themed parties also permeated the country club landscape; at another party in 1961, attendees received letters printed on CSA dollars.96 1961, the same year that nine black students integrated public schools, elite Atlantans were partying around the Confederacy.97 The irony here speaks for itself.

Debutante celebrations ranged in theme: country hoedowns, al fresco extravaganzas, and lake parties with buckets of beer and piles of shrimp.98 According to Gwin, one debutante even hosted a paper doll party, where all her guests wore dresses made from paper.99 Another debutante, Vickie Skandalakis, hosted a Bonnie and Clyde themed party with bags of fake money and hundreds of toy guns littered across the dance floor. In describing her ball, she exclaimed, "I had no idea making a debut could be so much fun. It has been one of the happiest periods of my life. I'm so thrilled and so appreciative of all the wonderful things people have

94 Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977, MSS 791, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 95 Benie’s 1960’s Scrapbook. Atlanta, GA. 96 Events 1937-1986, MSS 409, Box 1, Folder 3, Kenan Research Center at Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 97 Rebecca Burns, “The Integration of Atlanta Public Schools,” Atlanta Magazine, August 1, 2011. 98 Gwin, “Sky Is Limit For Deb Fetes.” 99 Gwin, “1967 Merry-Go-Round Slows Up.” 43 done for me. I think my Bonnie and Clyde party was just the greatest. I couldn't have wanted it any different nor better.”100

It should be noted that the Atlanta Constitution made several references to Vickie

Skandalakis’s heritage in its coverage of this debutante season. In “Two Debs Bow at Greek

Fete,” Gwin recounted a Phoenix Club party called the Greek Way. “There were a lot of linen closets raided that night. Nearly everybody had a sheet wrapped around them, and wore sandals… You could see people who looked like Socrates, Penelope, Plato, Atalanta, or

Alexander the Great, to name a few well known Greeks,” she wrote. 101 The men in attendance even wore their Greek fraternity letters under their clothes. At the close of this article, Gwin referenced the debutante Vickie Skandalakis, writing that she, with her parents, must be “quite at home among the Greek festivity.”102 Here, I believe that Vickie remained just exotic enough to be celebrated and included. If her complexion had been much darker or her religion slightly less familiar, I doubt this young belle would have been so accommodated.

For Susan, themed parties played an important part in her own deb experience. “Some of them were very elaborate,” she explained to me. “There were afternoon parties with picnics and lots of country club brunches, many luncheons. Sometimes, we would make a day of it and go out on people’s plantations outside Augusta.” When I asked Susan about these plantation-style parties, I had to inquire about the obvious role of segregation in Augusta. According to the Civil

Rights Digital Library, schools remained segregated in Augusta until 1972, a full 18 years after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. After integration, white parents often took their

100 Yolande Gwin, “Vickie, Alias Bonnie, Bows,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 6, 1970. 101 Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977, MSS 791, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 102 Atlanta Society Scrapbooks, 1951-1977. Atlanta History Center. 44 children to newly-founded private schools. Many of these majority-white schools still exist today.103

In our interview, Susan explained that segregation was rarely discussed in her house.

When I asked her about her most vivid memory of segregation, she took a deep breath, and then launched into a story still clearly etched in her memory from that time:

I can tell you one story I remember very clearly. My family kept a house in Daytona after my father died. It was a big wooden house, 100 years old, with a wraparound porch and many bedrooms. We would spend wonderful, relaxed summers there. And we would always take our cook, who had worked for my grandmother, with us. She was a wonderful person. A dear person to me.

I remember it so clearly. I was driving. She loved baseball, so I said, Camille, let’s go to a baseball game. It was a minor league team in Daytona. So, we went.

Again, I remember driving so clearly. It was a mild, beautiful summer evening, as we were driving across the bridge.

When we got there, we bought our tickets at separate box offices. I was confused when we walked in, though, and realized I had to leave her to go to another section. I sat in the white section, and she sat in the black section. We walked around the stadium, to get the seats in the two sections closest to one another. And there was a wire fence between us. And I remember I started to cry. I cry thinking about it.

She called me sister, and she said “Oh sister, stop it, it’s alright. It’s alright.” Like she was comforting me.

We couldn’t pass the popcorn back and forth to each other, but we still sat there, sitting close to one another. It was really upsetting. And it still is.

Interviewing the Atlanta debutantes, several admitted that segregation did not feel like a pressing concern, attesting to the success of these rituals that separated white elites from the

103 David Gambrell, “WSB-TV Newsfilm Clip of Students and Parents at a Local School on the First Day of Phase II of a Court-Ordered Desegregation Plan Utilizing School Pairing and Busing” (Augusta, GA, March 15, 1972), Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, WSB-TV Newsfilm Collection.

45 realities of the urban South. Elizabeth explained that “I was just so sheltered. It’s odd that we didn’t know more, it really is. Today, I can’t imagine not reading the paper. But I didn’t then, and we weren’t in our parent’s conversations.” Similarly, Benie explained that “none of this filtered down to me! Which is somewhat embarrassing, how much of a cocoon we were in. We didn’t go downtown to where things were going on, near Rich’s and Macy’s.” Benie’s words echo a sentiment shared by other debs at the time. As young women, they were conditioned to distance themselves from the actual events of the Civil Rights movement, although they were taking place only a few miles from their homes.

Later in our conversation, Benie added that “my parents never talked about Civil Rights that I remember. I’m sure my dad, who died at 103, was just as prejudiced when he died as he was when I was growing up. He just concealed it well… They were smart folks, my parents, but their view was limited by the suitcases they carried… In the South, these old prejudices, they are deep, hard, hard to forget.” When I pressed Benie for her earliest memory of segregation, she told me a story that she continues to find deeply disturbing:

It shows how children can only operate within the sphere they were brought up in.

We were allowed to ride the city bus to school from Brookwood Hills to Peachtree Battle. We could take it downtown and into Buckhead, it was a lot of freedom then. I remember I was 10 or 11 years old, sitting on the bus. I can see it now even, passing St. Phillips Church, headed to West Wesley. And a maid got on the bus and sat next to me. I didn’t know what to do. My parents had said that this was something I shouldn’t do. I remember feeling so confused, and that nothing felt right. So I got off the bus and walked the 2-3 miles to my house because I didn’t know what else to do.

It still disturbs me. I would love to go back and do it again, but you can’t undo time. It remains one of my strongest early Civil Rights memories.

We adored our maid and the yardman, but it was different. Even then, I knew that the wages Belle and Clifford were paid were insufficient, but that was that.

46

Things didn’t change for me until I met my husband. He gave me new experiences. He attended integrated schools; and I had never been around anyone besides white people. It took some re-learning for me, because I did what I had been taught.

I’m glad to say I raised four non-prejudiced children, but I admit, that even after all these years, I still have to fight it. It’s not something that comes easy to me. I’ve taught in schools, been a professor, and I always make a point to put aside my old prejudices. I have to make a conscious effort.

Benie’s struggle with her own upbringing and its “suitcase” well over fifty years later points to the intense inculcation of Atlanta’s elite. Time-consuming, expensive rites of passage like deb balls, sorority rush, and Junior League were all tools to keep women occupied, in a safe cocoon, away from the turmoil just beyond their country club gates. More than anything, the debutante ball, with its adherence to tradition and elegance, perpetuated segregation within an elite framework. In this context, it makes sense that debutante balls became increasingly extravagant.

For Benie, the most outlandish deb ball she attended was that of her Westminster classmate, Mary Emma. “Her parents did not spare any expense for that party,” she explained.

“They had parking attendants and a shuttle to bring people to the party. No one did this in 1963!”

Benie also recalled the elaborate meals the host family served: “a dinner, a midnight breakfast, and another breakfast when the sun came up. This was not a typical event.” When asked about her most memorable debutante experience, Elizabeth also recalled this party. Mary Emma, the focus of the evening’s festivities, was her cousin, and she remembered, “My picture made it into the Constitution for that party… It was really over the top. It was a circus theme and was very elaborate and really fun.”

Benie and Elizabeth’s memories proved correct. After finding Gwin’s write-up covering this party, I read about live animals, multiple tents, and glittery lights spelling out Mary Emma’s 47 name. According to Gwin, “it was like a never-never land of beauty. Tiny lights twinkled in the boxwood and other shrubs lining the walkways around the swimming pool. Spotlights—subdued to a moonlight glow—cast dancing shadows over the scene, while garden statues, 'dressed' for the affair with garlands and clusters of fragrant carnation swags, became centerpieces."104 For the debut, the host family even hired a renowned party planner known for his work in New York,

Palm Beach, and Washington.105

The circus theme touched every aspect of the party; “the midway had a real carnival atmosphere. There was a side show photographer, There were games of chance. There was the

Robin Hood archery tent. There was a gypsy fortune teller."106 Benie’s recollection of the midnight breakfast also proved correct. With the party lasting until past five in the morning, a breakfast of ham, eggs, waffles, and coffee was indeed served in a separate tent. The significant labor that went into Mary Emma’s party cements the idea that deb parties were more than “just for fun.”

Orientalism

According to Gwin, the parties hit “a new high in fun and originality” by the end of the decade. At these parties, she wrote, “anything could happen.”107 Often, parties borrowed from other countries without any regard for cultural sensitivity. This tone deafness is unsurprising given the extreme racial, religious, and ethnic segregation of Atlanta in this period. In many instances, parents bent on outdoing one another in creativity and finesse failed to examine the images they chose to display.

104 Yolande Gwin, “Debs Have Circus Under Big Top,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 15, 1963. 105 Gwin, “Debs Have Circus Under Big Top.” 106 Gwin, “Debs Have Circus Under Big Top.” 107 Yolande Gwin, “Honorable Parents Present Daughters,” The Atlanta Constitution, September 7, 1969. 48

For example, in one significant celebration, the parents sent out mustard colored invitations with red script inviting guests to their “Oriental Party.” In her article “Honorable

Parents Present Daughters,” Yolande Gwin said “your first impulse is to grab a coolie coat, a coolie hat and some straw sandals and rush right out to catch the Orient Express and meet adventures of varying type for which this famed train has been noted.”108 The host family, dressed in Chinese attire, chartered 5 buses as “sampans” which took all the guests to Lake

Lanier. Upon arrival, guests took in the “Torii Gate” at the clubhouse entrance and hundreds of colored lanterns. (Torii Gates are a Japanese architectural facet, not Chinese). Gwin’s enthusiasm is obvious in her article; she writes that “adventure, intrigue and mystery seemed to be closing in on all sides.” 109 This deb ball was staged in several acts. At intermission, “there was an exhibition of karate by three HUGE Orientals. They threw each other all over the place. It was unbelievable,” wrote Gwin.110

In 1960s Atlanta, the popularity of Asian-themed parties ricocheted across the deb world.

At PDC, a red origami invitation inviting teens to a “Japan” party “‘round the Driving Club pool” circulated. The invitation proclaims it will be the “best Japan party ever given,” hosted by two popular young women, suggesting that there had been multiple others. 111 In 1962, another invitation arrived for PDC members inviting them to attend a “Purple Pagoda Party” at the country club.112

In her article “Miss Akers Bows Amid Glamor,” Yolande Gwin recounted another exotically themed party: “One of a Thousand and One Nights.” Gwin explained the party was

108 Gwin, “Honorable Parents Present Daughters.” 109 Gwin, “Honorable Parents Present Daughters.”. 110 Gwin, “Honorable Parents Present Daughters.”. 111 Invitations, 1960s and 70s. MSS 409, Box 2, Folder 5, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 112 Invitations, 1960s and 70s. 49

“like a bazaar and a market place right out of an Arabian Nights story.”113 Again, this party sheds light on the use of foreign themes as a “safe” way to explore other cultures without being challenged in any way. At Miss Aker’s party, guests admired hundreds of themed party favors, an art tent, and of course, another midnight supper.114 At the end of the article, Gwin described the final allusion to the theme: “That woman was still in the tent, as serene as ever. You know about her. She is that Hindu woman with six arms named Shiba. She sure looked real in the moonlight. But everybody was rather relieved to know she was a papier-Mache statue.”115 Of course, Gwin did not seem to mind that Arabian and Hindu were not the same. But then again, neither were Chinese and Japanese.

Flowers, Butterflies, and Belles, Oh My!

Although many deb parties played into these elaborate, if questionable, themes, the majority maintained a more traditional feel. “Most had big bands, beautiful flowers,” Benie explained. Flowers were present in many of the debutante celebrations, wrapping their way around centerpieces and dotting the dancefloor. Like at weddings or funerals, flowers were a symbol of wealth at deb balls, for as historian Carol Wallace has argued, “what could be a more obvious way to spend money than to decorate a large space with the most evanescent of nature's creations?"116 Benie added that “at the Driving Club, they didn’t change the decor particularly. It was old excellence. The tables were just beautifully set with flowers, white tablecloths, fabulous service, silver gleaming.” The archival materials from the Atlanta History Center back up

Benie’s memory. At one extravagant 1959 presentation held in the Tack Room at the Piedmont

113 Yolande Gwin, “Miss Akers Bows Amid Glamor,” The Atlanta Constitution. 114 Gwin, “Miss Akers Bows Amid Glamor.” 115 Gwin, “Miss Akers Bows Amid Glamor.” 116 Wallace, All Dressed in White. 55. 50

Driving Club, “the individual tables, where guests will dine, will be covered with gold cloths and centered with arrangements of roses, carnations, chrysanthemums and white lilacs.” At the entrance of the ballroom stood “huge bronze urns holding arrangements of roses, carnations, and chrysanthemums.”117

One trio of debutantes took floral arrangements a step further, literally constructing a garden in the center of the PDC ballroom. These “three popular members of the Debutante Club” maintained an Old South motif for their party, with a live orchestra in traditional garb.118 Over

200 members of the debutante set gathered for dancing from nine until two in the morning.

Examining photos this event, I saw black and white photos of lipsticked smiles, demure dresses, and well-dressed beaus. Each young woman’s sorority information was listed beneath her photograph.119

In addition to the southern motifs, many deb balls included butterfly imagery. In one

1965 deb party, guests enjoyed hundreds of pastel butterflies scattered around the roof and smaller butterflies on the pink tablecloths. The theme was heavily anthropomorphized in the writings of Gwin, who described how, with lights sparking, “the human butterflies were more active. They were dancing.”120 For these parties, the society write-ups matched the dreamy atmosphere. “At last I can dance under the stars—and just think on a roof garden, too,” sighed one interviewee, as she danced away with her date.121 Butterfly imagery also made its way into the “Oriental” themed party. In addition to the Japanese decorations, the boxes (filled with “yum yum supper”) were topped with enormous nylon butterflies.122 Yet another butterfly affair was

117 Atlanta Debutante Club Scrapbooks, 1959-1995, MSS 747, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, GA. 118 “Festive Dance at Driving Club Set for Deb Trio,” The Atlanta Constitution, July 17, 1959. 119 “Festive Dance…” The Atlanta Constitution. 120 Yolande Gwin, “Two Parties Set Social Precedence,” The Atlanta Constitution, July 25, 1965. 121 “Two Parties Set Social Precedence,” The Atlanta Constitution. 122 Gwin, “Honorable Parents Present Daughters.” 51 the three-act presentation of Mary Jane Adair Parham. Guests could gaze at imported nylon butterflies that hung from the ceiling while admiring white daisies and “huge kissing balls studded with summer flowers.”123 Lucky guests were even presented with white straw slippers trimmed in yellow ribbon to protect their feet. According to Gwin, the Parhams painted several thousand slippers for the garden party. The overall effect was “like a floral fairyland.”124

This butterfly imagery may seem like an innocuous detail; however, the motif carries with it a significant message. According to Gwin, “the debutantes are called butterflies due to their flitting around from here to there and everywhere, in a gay and carefree manner.”125 This image of a butterfly, harmless and blissful, ties into larger abstractions of Southern women.

Debutantes adhered to and deepened the idealized female form: sweet, simple, eager.

This idea that sweetness and prettiness was more important than intelligence is littered throughout the scrapbooks, letters, and newspaper write ups from this period. For example, in her scrapbook, a twenty-year-old Benie wrote in the margins next to her Dean’s List Award “My smarter side -- well concealed!” In an accompanying note she sent me in the scrapbook, Benie added, “I think the remark on this page is the most telling and perhaps distressing looking back.

One thing to think it — another to actually write it down for posterity!”126

Similarly, letters upon letters congratulating Benie on being selected Sigma Nu sweetheart line the inside of her scrapbook, while there are sparse references to her academic achievements.127 Her honor of being a fraternity sweetheart was also included in the Atlanta

123 Yolande Gwin, “Afternoon Parties Return to Style,” The Atlanta Constitution, June 29, 1969. 124 Gwin, “Afternoon Parties Return to Style.” 125 Gwin, “Two Parties Set Social Precedence.” 126 Benie’s 1960s Scrapbook. Atlanta, GA. 127 For reference, being crowned a fraternity sweetheart was considered an enormous honor at Southern schools in the 1960s. This designation meant that a young woman had pledged her dedication, time, and energy to the men of that particular chapter and symbolized their values. For more, see Jon Gorgosz, “She Was a Sweetheart: The Sweetheart Symbol and the Formation of Feminist Roots in Campus Culture from 1945 to 1970,” American Educational History Journal 42, no. 2 (January 1, 2015): 185–202. 52 newspaper: “Atlanta has three new sweethearts, all of whom were crowned at separate formal balls enlivened by pageantry… It is significant that the girls selected are not only pretty and loaded with charm, but are outstanding in varied college activities.”128 For being declared

“sweetheart” of the fraternity, Benie received letters of congratulations addressed to her and to her father, a tea held in her honor, and a front page mention in the Emory Wheel.

These kinds of accolades cemented aspirational femininity for Atlanta’s elite in the

1960s. Pretty, charming, and approachable, the debutante and the Junior League president and the fraternity sweetheart all belonged to the same tribe. They wore the right dresses, knew the right kind of people, and remained flirty yet chaste. Concluding my primary research, I confirmed my hypothesis that these rites of passage upheld this whitewashed vision of Southern identity. As the Civil Rights movement swept across the South, the elite turned inward, strengthening and codifying their internal institutions to offset the possibility of change.

Writing this thesis, I realized that I was not reporting and writing from some strange corner of American culture, but from the very heart of it. These decadent rites of passage did more than prop up white power. They animated an entire culture around it. In a world where their status was finally being threatened, wealthy whites used their daughters as a way to cling to the past. Moving into the present day, I had to wonder, has anything really changed?

CONCLUSION

Last summer, I received an invitation to attend a friend’s debutante ball in Charlotte,

North Carolina. Opening the envelope at my mailbox, I immediately noticed how closely it resembled the invitations I had seen in the 1960s archives. Considering the glossy script, thick cardstock, and an invitation to dine and dance, I felt a glimmer of what my interviewees must

128 Benie’s 1960s Scrapbook. Atlanta, GA. 53 have experienced in the 1960s. Later in the month, a separate invitation arrived to attend a party

“for young people” only. I learned that this Friday night celebration served as a kind of mashup of all of those individual parties from the “little season” in the post-war period. In 2018, it seemed, all 25 girls celebrated together.

After my dad dropped me off at the hotel downtown, I saw gaggles of young women everywhere, bringing with them an excited buzz over who was attending, what they were wearing, and where their hair was being styled. For the most part, the girls catching up knew each other in adolescence, but had scattered to different colleges across the South after high school. Almost everyone was in a sorority. I also learned that many of these guests had attended other deb balls; some were even debutantes from their various cities of origin. Walking into the

“young people’s” party on Friday night, I was struck by three things immediately. First, the country club in Charlotte was extraordinary. It was a massive building, replete with white columns and opulent furnishings. There were real flowers wrapped around the periphery, and attendants helped us with our coats.

Figure 5 Andy Warhol Themed Party (November, 2018. Photo by author). 54

Next, I noticed that the party had an Andy Warhol theme. Giant renderings of each debutante as an Andy Warhol portrait lined the walls, and people posed for photos beneath them.

This stylized component brought me back to the extravagant themes of the 1960s. Finally, I was struck by the raucous nature of the party itself. I had been prepared for heavy drinking; after speaking with a young woman who debuted in 2016, I learned that becoming intoxicated was more or less the norm at these events. The open bar was crowded with people my age, jostling each other for free drinks. There was also a buffet of food, although hardly any of the girls seemed interested.

Unsurprisingly, the event was incredibly white, with only a handful of people of color in attendance. The musicians, however, were a mostly African American jam band. The servers were also largely people of color. The disparity was glaring, and I wondered if anyone else had noticed or even cared. As the night progressed, various staff members handed out party favors like rings, sunglasses, and at a certain point, light up cups. It was a boisterous blur, somewhere between a fraternity formal and a Bat Mitzvah.

In contrast, the formal party on Saturday night felt much more like a wedding.

Unfortunately, we were not invited to attend the official presentation before the party. Only family members and a few chosen guests were allowed to see the young women “come out” with their fathers and escorts. While this spoke more to the size of the venue than the clandestine nature of the presentation, I could not help but remember that the debutante balls in the 1960s were also “members only” events.

As this ceremony was occurring, all of the other guests were sent to a local brewery for pre-party cocktails. At the venue, we were directed to a separate room; however, we could still see the “normal” Charlotte residents through the glass partition door. As the night progressed, 55 several people came up to us and asked if we were attending a wedding. I found it increasingly difficult to explain the event I was attending, and why it was even happening. “I’m not a part of it, not really!” I wanted to say. But I was. And it was easy to get sucked up in it all. It was incredibly exciting to see my friend; our group embraced her, made her twirl in her wedding dress, admired her long, white leather gloves.

Significantly, while wedding and prom dresses have evolved to match contemporary styles, deb dresses have remained firmly locked in time. In his article “Dresses for Debs: Yes,

Something’s Sacred,” David Colman explains that deb dresses have continued to adhere to a strict set of rules. “Innocent white is an absolute must -- no ivory, no buff, no pearl,” he writes.

Moreover, for most debs, the shape of the dress has remained unquestionably chaste, meaning a skirt to the floor, with no hint of décolletage or clinging fabric. Colman goes on to write that “the dress must feature as little adornment as possible: no lace or elaborate beading, just stiff duchess satin, organdy, tulle (albeit yards and yards) and maybe a satin flower or two.”129

The Charlotte debs’ dresses matched this description, with only a hint of cleavage or collarbone visible. Overall, the girls looked beautiful, and most seemed at ease in the center of the dance floor, holding drinks and celebrating with their families. Only when I zoomed out on the larger picture did my uneasiness return. Looking past the incredible displays of flowers and decorations (somehow, this country club was even more splendid than the one from Friday night), I noticed other, more sinister aspects. For example, behind one group of bartenders, an

“oriental” tapestry hung, with people who appeared Asian embroidered across the periphery.

Despite the iPhones and e-cigarettes, this scene could have been right out of a 1960s Oriental themed party.

129 David Colman, “Dresses for Debs: Yes, Something’s Sacred,” The New York Times, December 21, 1997. 56

Saturday’s music was demonstrably more traditional than Friday’s, with crowd pleasers like “Build Me Up Buttercup” and “Sweet Home Alabama.” The dance floor was also enormous, sweeping across the country club. Looking up, I spotted a group of older gentlemen playing live music. Because the debutantes’ families attended this event, I saw grandparents, siblings, and cousins crowded around the debutantes. Every single family was white.

Figure 6 Country Club Ballroom (November 2018, Photo by author).

Observing the event, I could not help but think that most of these people, whether guest or debutante, looked like they had been conditioned for this event their whole lives. An inordinate amount of the guests already knew how to swing dance. “We learned in middle school,” one girl told me. When it came to dates, most of the boys were either in fraternities or had recently graduated from the same Southern colleges. Many of the “marshals” (made obvious with their purple sashes) were girls’ brothers, cousins, or close friends. “It’s not romantic, but symbolic,” one girl told me. (Symbolic of what? Male authority over women? I wondered).

Because the committee printed the brochures months in advance, it was considered far too risky to bring one’s boyfriend or on-again-off-again beaux. According to whispers on the dance floor, 57 one girl’s mother paid thousands of dollars to reprint all of the programs when she had to change her date.

Unsurprisingly, another deb I talked to found the event to be “WASPY in the same way that the country clubs are.” Echoing Benie’s story from a half century earlier, she told of the exclusiveness of the invited crowd. She remembered that “one of my best friends in middle school was Jewish and it seemed like she was one of the only ones who didn’t get invited. We all pitched a fit.” When I asked this same debutante if she would encourage her daughter to take part, her answer was resolute. “I wouldn’t want my daughter to do it unless there was a totally different version. It’s nothing I would push on her. I’d be just as transparent as I’m being with you right now. It’s fun to get dressed up, it’s cool that mom and grandma did it. And then I’d let her decide.”

These kinds of statements highlight the tricky nature of debutante balls as a rite of passage. Through extensive research and oral interviews, I have learned that these parties are more than a fun, coming-of-age tradition. My work bears out the notion that deb balls are tools to cement a certain patriarchal vision in an ever-modernizing world. These ceremonies celebrate an antebellum ideal: the fragile white women, literally preserved in a white dress with white gloves.

From start to finish, deb balls keep women’s bodies firmly within the control of men. Debutantes are passed from father to male escort, all the while smiling and looking just right.

Some who read this thesis may think I am going too far. After all, debutante balls raise money to charity. They are so much fun. They are family tradition. But nearly fifty years after the timeframe of my thesis, the allure around debuting clearly still remains. The girls were all perfectly made up, and seeing them dart among their friends and family was like observing 25 brides at one giant wedding. One of the former debs I spoke with, who now lives in California, 58 told me that explaining the debutante process to outsiders is difficult. When she explained the difference between Southern culture and the rest of the country, I thought back to my interview with women who debuted in the 1960s. I remembered Elizabeth, who told me how prescribed

Atlanta was in the 1960s, how she craved something different for herself. Here, despite the chronological chasm, these women’s words were more or less interchangeable.

Ultimately, the lack of change between the 1960s and the present day speaks to the aggressive promotion of nostalgia that permeates the South. Studying debutante balls, it becomes impossible to ignore deep-seated anxieties over Southern identity and expression. In the post-war period, as the Civil Rights movement progressed, the comfortable world white Southerners had inoculated themselves within seemed jeopardized for the first time. As a result, they confronted the future with fear, choosing to embrace the past —with all of its performance and tradition — with hope. After attending a deb ball firsthand, I realized that the twenty-first century was hardly different. In some ways, the relationship between debutante balls and the preservation of the white Southern elite has not simply continued, but thrived. As historians, we should ask ourselves how that dispels some of the comfortable myths about gender and race that we operate under today. Bibliography

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