Despite the pervading idea that women, especially women of color, sat around and waited for the men to make history, women were actually vibrant participants in their own culture and in their own lives. In the case of Mrs. Jennie Louise Van Durzee Welcome, who seems like the sort of woman you refer to as Mrs, no matter what, she played many roles within the changing society. As an intermittent entertainer, teacher, activist, and documentary filmmaker, Mrs. Welcome shows up in a variety of sources, but most of the primary sources are society pages that document Mrs. Welcome's appearances at various social gatherings, usually Who's Who In Colored America, where she made several appearances over the course of her long, colorful life.
According to a post about Welcome advertising her teaching prowess, and based on that advertisement alone, Welcome had skill enough in art, music, piano, photography, painting, and the real estate business to teach them to students. This is an incredibly wide net, showing that she was remarkably educated and capable not only in traditional artistic pursuits, but in new ones like Photography. She also must have had an excellent head for numbers and good intrapersonal skills, which would have aided her abilities to sell.
In regard to secondary sources, Mrs. Welcome generally appears with her husband, Ernest Toussiant Welcome, as they do in The Documentary Film Reader and Struggles For Representation. Both books discuss their dedication to making sure that black soldier's contributions to the World War I efforts were seen, as they made "Doing Their Bit", which was a 12 part documentary which focused on "the military and economic role played by all races in the War Of Nations both 'Over Here' and 'Over There.'" Their pushback to this systematic erasure of people of color by using a new medium - they were filming in only 1916- suggests a woman who is unafraid of change or danger. The bit of "Doing Their Bit" that could be found on Youtube shows a silent, black and white film that is literally right up close and personal with the soldiers, suggesting that Welcome herself was probably right by the battlefield, at what was probably incredible personal risk. The pair of them also created a lithograph that showed black soldiers not only on the battlefield, but at home as well, introducing viewers to their families and showing that they were not only fierce heros, but people too. This attempt to humanize black people, who were either demonized or oversexualized, is
For me, there is a lot that I'm going to have to assume about Mrs. Welcome, because while there are things that she made herself, there isn't anything that she wrote about her own life. So what I'm looking to do is to compare her life to the average woman's at her time period.
Great hook to start your blog post: “Despite the pervading idea that women, especially women of color, sat around and waited for the men to make history, women were actually vibrant participants in their own culture and in their own lives. In the case of Mrs. Jennie Louise Van Durzee Welcome, who seems like the sort of woman you refer to as Mrs. no matter what, she played many roles within the changing society.” I was immediately interested in your subject, and eager to learn more. I recommend that you keep this, or something like it, as the opening to your paper. Well done!
ReplyDeleteWelcome’s life seems incredibly rich and interesting. Had she lived at a later time, or been of a different race, there would probably be much more written about her. I am glad to see you shining a light on her story, and I hope you can parlay your term paper into a published article, or maybe even a book if you can find enough source material. This definitely seems like a story that deserves to be told.
It is a shame that you do not have any autobiographical material from Welcome herself, which would have been perfect for a microhistory, but I think you can still be successful in framing this work as a microhistory by placing yourself in Welcome’s position and looking outward on the world in which she lived and worked. Did her husband leave an autobiography, or a collection of papers in an archive somewhere? Do you have records of people with whom she worked, who may have mentioned her in their own writings? I would suggest a visit to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and perhaps a meeting with one of their curators to see if they can point you to sources you might not have considered.
I think this is an excellent project, and I look forward to seeing it brought to fruition!