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Asheville Post Card Co. Rhododendron in Bloom at the Foot of Mt. Mitchell, Wester North Carolina (343). 1937. From the Ridley Wills Postcard Collection, MS.3781, in the Postcards from the Great Smoky Mountains digital collection at University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries Special Collections. https://digital.lib.utk.edu/collections/islandora/object/pcard00%3A107075
Did You Know ?
Mellanee Goodman
Enslaved women were essential to the production of garments on the plantation. These craftswomen made everyday necessities such as the coats, quilts, aprons, mattresses, rugs, and tablecloths valued by slave owners. Without enslaved craftswomen these objects would otherwise have had to be purchased.[1] These women carded cotton and wool, spun thread, and dyed it to produce textiles for the plantation and international trade markets.[2] Slaves in Southern Appalachian states such as Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina were immersed in textile production, as they were in plantations across America. Plantation weaving rooms accounted for two-thirds of the Southern Appalachian textile manufacturers.[3] Dunaway offers an account of an “eastern Tennessee firm at which 14 slaves operated 300 spindles.”[4] It is an incredible task for only 14 women to operate 300 spindles. This requires immense proficiency and stamina as well as intricate knowledge of process and understanding of yarn production.
[1]Farrington, Lisa. “Art and Design in the Colonial Era.” In African American Art: A Visual Cultural History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 20, 25.[2] Camp, Stephanie. “The Intoxication of Pleasurable Amusement: Secret Parties and the Politics of the Body.” In Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. [3] Dunaway, Wilma. “Black Appalachians in Manufacturing: Slave Labor in Plantation Manufacturing. “in Slavery and Emancipation in the Mountain South, 110. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. [4] Dunaway, Wilma. “Black Appalachians in Manufacturing: Slave Labor in Plantation Manufacturing. “in Slavery and Emancipation in the Mountain South, 110. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Biography
Mellanee Goodman
She/Her/Hers
Written by Amy Meissner
Mellanee Goodman loves glimpsing mountaintops from every window in her North Carolina home. Her love for nature and “uphill and downhill” terrain brought her closer to place-based research studying the history of Black craftswomen in the upper South, including Southern Appalachia, from 1850¬–1910. This investigation reveals craft of the everyday and domestic that is often overlooked or erased due to the violent mobilization of Black bodies as methods of production. Mellanee’s interest lies in the craft work of Black women in particular––mattresses, brooms, spun thread, woven cloth, and knitted and sewn garments––objects made for the master’s plantation homes, but also for families in enslaved quarters. While most of these items no longer exist nor retain attribution to the original maker, her study of ex-slave narratives, newspaper clippings, and the education of the formerly enslaved after emancipation pieces together a more complete picture of craft- and place-based identities of Black craftswomen, some of whom lived in the same mountains Mellanee currently calls home.