to: Craft > #07 - Transmission of Craft Knowledge, Part 1
Lucindy Lawrence Jurdon, age 79. United States Alabama, 1936. Between 1936 and 1938. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/mesnp010242/. This photo was taken in 1936 as part of the Federal Writers’ Project, “Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States from Interviews in the United States.”
Transmission of Craft Knowledge, Part 1
Mellanee Goodman
Lucindy Lawrence Jurdon, the woman gripping the spinning wheel, was born enslaved in Macon, Georgia, in 1858 on a four-hundred-acre plantation. In 1936, interviewers with the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Writers’ Project visited Jurdon’s home and interviewed her about her experiences during enslavement. Jurdon quickly answered, “My mammy was a fine weaver and did de work for white an’ colored. Dis is her spinning wheel, an’ it can still be used. I use it sometimes now…. [while enslaved] Us made our own cloth an’ our stockings, too.”[1] Jurdon’s story exemplifies the transition of craft knowledge from mother to child in that she continued to weave after enslavement using the skills she learned from her mother. When questioned about other things that she might have learned on the plantation, Jurdon stated, “No’m, us never did learn nothing. If us tried to read or write, dey would whack our fingers off.”[2] So while Jurdon was denied the opportunity to learn to read and write because she was enslaved, she was permitted to learn her mother’s craft.
[1] Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, “It Aint the Same” Vol. 1, Alabama, Aarons-Young, 1936–1937: 24. Manuscript/mixed material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn010/.[2] Ibid.Contextualization
To help understand craft through the lens of Black women’s experiences, one has to look for Black women’s voices through sources such as narratives of former slaves. In these narratives, Black women described their labor as being craft, and spoke of gender roles from their own experiences. Additionally one can gain an understanding of the educational structures created for Black women.
Further readings
Battle-Baptiste, Whitney. Black Feminist Archaeology. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2011.
Dunaway, A. Wilma. Slavery and Emancipation in the Mountain South. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project, “It Aint the Same” Vol. 1, Alabama, Aarons-Young. 1936–1937. Manuscript/mixed material. Retrieved from the Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/item/mesn010/.
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.