Thread. Im reading about post-Civil War Black life. Listen, white women were SEETHING about Black freewomen dressing themselves well LOL

White mistresses were so upset they wrote in their diaries about how bothered they were former slaves were stuntin on their asses

Freewomen leveraged dress as a way to assert their individuality - masters + mistresses were BOTHERED. How dare we be civil AND stylish?

“In parading as ladies, Black women struck a deliberately targeted blow at racism + the pedestal of southern white womanhood.” Thavolia Glymph

A diary entry of a former slave mistress. Mrs. Gertrude Thomas was BIG MAD lol

“Numbers of negro women some of them quite Black…promenading up the streets with black lace veil shading them from the embrowning rays of a sun under whose influence they had worked all their life.”

Another white mistress, Kate Cumming, wrote in her diary about how Black women dressed to attend freedom parades The Karens were mad at #Juneteenth lewks

“The main portion of the women do little else than walk the streets, dressed in all kinds of gaudy attire.”

Union soldiers would sometimes escort Freewoman back to the plantation to get their children + belongings

Often freewomen would take some of their former mistresses gowns, jewelry, perfumes etc as an act of reclamation — So the Karens calling their own clothes gawdy?! Hating

There’s a lot of Tigon Law talk in the replies. I get it but this ain’t that. lol

Two different subjects. Two different time periods. We’re talking about what Black women did of their own volition once free — Not dress codes.