Not Your Scarlet O'Hara: Black Women Performing the Southern Belle
Since its revival as a cultural practice in the 1960s, Civil War reenactment has primarily been associated with white men perceived as longing for a return to the social, political, and cultural milieu that characterized the Old South. However, increasing African American participation in historical enactment has enabled the representation of long-forgotten memories foregrounding black experiences during the era. One reenactment group in particular, Female Reenactors of Distinction, or FREED, stands out for its work in foregrounding black women’s work as abolitionists, Union spies, and Reconstruction-era reformers, as well as their pioneering accomplishments in an era marked by severe constraints on the opportunities of both African Americans and women. At reenactments, parades, and other venues, the group’s presence helps undermine dominant images suggestive of black passivity before, during, and after the war.
However, the performances of black women reenactors extend beyond this agenda to encompass another, more subversive goal: by primarily portraying historical figures who hailed from middle- or upper class backgrounds, they call into question basic assumptions about the most recognizable icon of antebellum America, the southern belle. As black women dressed in the upper-class ladies’ attire commonly associated with affluent white women, their appearances at living history events reveals the performative nature of southern whiteness itself.
FREED’s Performative Work
FREED was formed in August of 2005 in Washington, D.C. as a ladies’ auxiliary organization for the African American Civil War Memorial and Museum. Upon joining the group, each member is required to choose a character, or alternately, a composite of characters, and conduct historical research on the life and work of that person. Though there are a handful of women who perform as slaves, the majority performs as middle-class or professional women, such as Susan McKinney Steward, the first African American woman physician, Mary Eliza Mahoney, the first black woman registered nurse, and Charlotte Forten Grimke, a prominent abolitionist, writer, and educator. Some portray women who were born into slavery, but were able to rise to middle-class status, such as Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield, who became a highly-regarded concert singer and was known as the “Black Swan,” and Katherine Ferguson, who started the first Sunday school in New York City. Members perform first-person narratives of their characters’ experiences at various venues, including battle reenactments, museums, schools, and parades.
Group members indicated that the decision to portray middle-class women was motivated by the desire to present an image of Civil War-era black womanhood that represents an alternative to the stereotypical image exemplified by Hattie McDaniel’s character, Mammy, in Gone With the Wind. Pat Tyson, one of FREED’s co-founders, said that their performances are meant to convey the assertion that black women were not only hardworking reformers and pioneers during the era, but also “ladies of elegance and distinction.” She further suggested that, like most reenactments of the past, FREED’s performances have implications for the present. “We women existed, she said. We are not about to sit on the sidelines and let other people define who we are.”
This sentiment was echoed in the experiences of other group members. Sheila started a chapter of FREED in her community in Gettysburg in 2006 upon noticing that the black men who participated in the annual reenactment had no women reenactors providing support. Although she does not portray a specific character, she said it is important to her that the spectators who descend upon the town each July for the battle reenactments see black women who convey an image of middle-class respectability. “The people who come to Gettysburg don’t realize there were African Americans who were not slaves,” she said. “[I] wanted to dispel that myth.” Carole Thomas, who portrays teacher and author Frances Ann Rollin, the first African American to write a full-length biography (of abolitionist Martin Delaney) said that her most rewarding experiences have been those in which she is able to parlay onlookers’ fascination with her appearance into conversations about Rollins’ middle class background as a free woman of color, and welcomes opportunities to educate people about the fact that black women sometimes occupied the images typically associated with white women. She recounted her experiences marching in a commemorative parade, where the spectators included black women who shouted “thank you” to the group for representing an alternative image of antebellum black womanhood. Nevertheless, the dominance of the “Mammy” icon means she sometimes encounters doubts about authenticity, which indicates the importance of FREED’s work. “In Fort Pulaski (Georgia), a lady from the Georgia Genealogical Society said to me, ‘you are so beautiful. Are you dressed like a typical African American woman?’” she said. “I told her my character was not a slave and dressed like this. Most people [then] want to know more about the person.”
FREED’s More Radical Performative Work
As these comments indicate, the women of FREED view reenactments as opportunities to educate people about the fact that the image of ideal femininity during the Civil War era was not limited to white women. The power of the group’s performances lies not only in the opportunity to present verbal narratives foregrounding black women’s pioneering achievements, but also in the visual narratives offered through their upper-class appearances. In so doing, they employ a performance that, though based on the historical experiences of actual black women, engages a subversive element of racial mimicry. The women’s conservative attire, in which they are covered from head to toe, with very little jewelry and no makeup, combined with their quiet, modest, and dignified demeanor, constitutes a style of dress and mode of behavior were popularly perceived as qualities of proper femininity during the antebellum era, and were assumed to be among the traits that generally distinguished white women from black women. In this sense, the reenactments pose the following question: if one of the most celebrated images of white womanhood, the southern belle, can be performed by women who have been popularly imagined as her polar opposite—might we be able to envision whiteness itself as a performance?
The power (and value) of whiteness as an identity lies, in part, on the notion that it is a natural, fixed quality inherently imbued with certain characteristics, including those associated with the belle’s assumed ideal femininity. Similarly, blackness is perceived as embodying fixed characteristics, including the vulgarity and ugliness associated with “unfeminine” black female slaves. FREED’s work in “flipping the script” demonstrates that the qualities associated both with whiteness and blackness are neither natural nor fixed, but are, rather, performed.
Conclusion
For its female as well as its male practitioners, African American Civil War reenactment represents an unlikely fusion of Civil War memory with contemporary black cultural politics. FREED’s enactment of the role of the proper southern lady, the eminent icon of white southern femininity, reveals the constructed and enacted nature of race, and transforms the narrow, marginalized way black womanhood has been portrayed in popular culture. In so doing, they are using historical reenactment to continue the work of their 19th century forebears.
*See these links for “FREED” women and other Civil War re-enactors: