Release yourself
            Release, release
            Release yourself

                       –Patti LaBelle, “Release Yourself”¹

Introduction

When searching in public photo archives for moments that capture Black women’s private pleasures and rest, the findings are not always plentiful, and definitely not joyful. Generally, such images in the public domain depict the so-called “free” moments of enslaved Black women, or are very posed and orchestrated images.

Historically, Black people in the United States were enslaved to supply forced labor to build the country on occupied and unceded Indigenous land. In the decades following emancipation, there has been continuous resistance to expressions of Black freedom, especially as it relates to pleasure and rest.²

As we search for and find the limited images of Black women’s private pleasures and rest in openly accessible archives, we need to acknowledge that, in the first century following photography’s invention, there were minimal financial means, which restricted access to photographic equipment to document these moments, further reducing the possibility of capturing for posterity these moments of Black women’s freedom. This is in contrast to our current digital era, when access to photographic equipment has eased.

Emancipation, Freedom Papers, and Private Pleasures

Some of the very first evidence of Black freedom, before emancipation was universally granted in 1863, were freedom papers. This undecorated handmade tin box carried the most invaluable possession that a Black person could have: evidence of one’s own freedom. The material offered functional, physical protection from fire, dirt, and debris, rather than elaborate embellishments that would match the preciousness of the freedom papers.

Fully Exposed: Gaze and Love, the Mechanics of Disrespect and Respect

Like the tin box, the archive has the potential to operate as a dual site of preciousness and safety, establishing a clear intersection between items reflecting Black freedom and the archive’s respectful handling for the public’s witnessing of those sensitive materials. I come to this notion through my life experiences as a Black woman, specifically the recent personal instances when I have felt carefully seen and kindly affirmed, as in the picture below. I asked for this photograph to be made by someone I am in dialogue with, who I believed would not document me, but would carefully witness me through their camera lens. These are some of the conditions that have allowed me to reveal myself in my most intimate relationships with family, friends, lovers, collaborators, and partners.

Conversely, I detest feeling physically objectified as a Black woman. It does not matter the age, gender, ethnicity, or setting of who is doing the objectifying. I believe that today’s gaze is one of the residuals from slavery’s foundational belief that Black women deserved to be owned in the United States.

However, last year I had a romance with a visual artist who primarily moved through the world by his creative sense of sight, secondarily by smell, taste, touch, and sound.

One evening I fell deeply asleep at his home, only to wake up in the middle of the night to his kissing my shoulder. I realized he had been watching me for some time, while I was in my most vulnerable physical state, naked and asleep. But then I realized something new in my watching him watch me: He could have done any manner of nonconsensual things like sketch my naked body, or make mental notes about the gestures I made while sleeping, incorporating it into his creative work. Instead, when I asked him why he was staring at me, he kissed me softly again, and said he meant no disrespect. He simply loved to watch the beauty of me resting, unposed and unclothed. I realized then what it meant to be lovingly witnessed.

Body Sovereignty and Vulnerability

My seer reminds me of the conditions that surround and veil Black women, how Black women choose intimacy and assert body sovereignty, as well as the historic and present-day choices that we make to archive our internal lives and work. Materials preserved and found in the archives of the United States are extensions of the country’s history, which does not have an extensive record of trustworthy witnessing or safe companionship to Black women’s vulnerability.

Moreover, Black women’s vulnerability need not be witnessed.

And not everything that is vulnerable and witnessed should be documented, i.e. photographed, written about, or otherwise made into a record for posterity. Furthermore, not everything that is vulnerable, witnessed, and documented necessarily belongs in the public domain, accessible to the general public, as long as we continue to live in a country that is not universally safe or kind stewards of Black women’s subjectivities, lives, images, or archives.

My Mother and Her Private Pleasures as a Free Black Woman

Exactly 110 years after the emancipation of Black people, my mother labored and birthed her third child (me), and managed to create an energetic shield surrounding her private pleasure and rest that rivals the protection of tungsten offered by planet Earth.

Her protection? Clear and direct communication surrounding her weekly bathtub soaks.

No one was allowed to disturb her peace during this one time, every weekend.

No community neighbors or extended family members who decided to arrive downstairs in our apartment building would be announced or permitted indoors.

No intermittent telephone calls would be accepted. We as children knew to occupy our time quietly, feed ourselves fully, and keep any lingering squabbles silent.

To this day, I have no clear idea what my mother did for those one or two hours during her weekly bathtub soaks. I just know that the only companions allowed to enter her bathroom were her pack of cigarettes and single glass of red wine. When she emerged, she was a different kind of clean than how my brothers, my dad, or I looked after our efficient showers.

Bathtub Time for My Mother and Alice Key

My clear and personal mental images of my mother’s private, weekly bathtub soaks do not resemble the photo showing the entertainer Alice Key in her bathtub. I see a beautiful, naked Black woman purposefully smiling at the person on the other side of the camera lens, just to the right of a tripod, in a pristinely untouched bathroom. It is leisurely, yes, but it is also posed. This is a photo crafted for the media.³

As I look at Ms. Key in her bathroom in 1937, I do not see the standard evidence that I spied when I was a girl, witnessing my mother emerge from her weekly pleasurable soaks: steaming water condensed on the mirror, evaporated bubbles on the bathtub’s periphery, magazines strewn about on the floor, or half used bars of decadently fragranced soap.

My formative thoughts about Black women’s private pleasures and rest were shaped by what I could indirectly observe about my mother and her private pleasure and rest time. While the adult version of me wishes that I had a conversation with my mother about any legacies or habits of pleasure and rest that she inherited, or what she may have wanted to intentionally teach me, I admire and have an extreme respect for the texture of those memories because my mother’s private pleasures and rest deserved and demanded to be that: hers, and hers alone.

I am relieved that my mother’s sanctuary time was not recorded in any way. I am glad she has her memories and I have preserved mine. Most of all, I am grateful that her bathtub soaks are not an image in the public domain.

Group Camaraderie in Free Time

That said, images of singular free Black women engaged in private pleasures and rest are not the only lacunae in the public domain. The supply of images of Black women in groups engaged in leisure also happens to be limited. In this photograph of Black soldiers playing group sports, though, we see a public and relational aspect of Black women’s pleasure. Black women’s companionship and camaraderie is on full display in an organized game of basketball among Army corps members. No smiles are exhibited, though each woman appears fully engaged with each other as they maneuver on court. This feels important to consider alongside the archival photo of Alice Key in the bathtub, a space associated with relaxing. These servicewomen were photographed sometime between 1939-1945, relatively close to the 1937 photograph of Alice Key in the bathtub. The basketball game appears to be played during the Corps members’ free time, outside of mandatory Army Corps duties. Moreover, for the public domain, this is a rare photograph in that the Black women are unposed in their play.

Inner Circle of Friendship and Gaze

I continued to seek casual evidence in the archives of the overlap between Black women’s friendship, leisure time, pleasure, and rest. To find this outside of an outsider’s documentary gaze seems possible only in circumstances that do not involve labor and work. Witness instead this photograph of two Black women in Tulsa, Oklahoma, apparently coming from or going to one of their homes, seen in the background. They appear to be posing for a camera that was held in the hands of someone they knew. Their facial expressions are of a more private nature, the photo evidencing a shared delight between each other and the person behind the camera, as if they are surrounded by the simple joy of keeping their own company, as well as the joy of being captured in that moment. It is likely that the person who took the photo is a community member, family member, or a friend, who may or may not have been a professional photographer, but clearly had access to and familiarity with the two women. The warm dynamic between the photographer who posed the two women in Tulsa is different from the photographer posing Alice Key. The beauty of the Tulsa photograph emerges from a sense of camaraderie between all parties on both sides of the lens. Conversely, the beauty that emanates from the Alice Key photo is from the photographer’s skillfully staged scene and the beauty of the photographer’s subject.

Additional context surrounding the Tulsa photo is the time period that it was taken. We know that the photo was taken in the 1920s. However, we do not know if this was before or after the 1921 Tulsa race massacre that killed nearly 800 residents, burned over 1,000 homes, and erased the material evidence of Black Wall Street’s success.

We know there was a thriving Black community in Tulsa. This photograph allows us in the 21st century to witness it. These two Black women are well dressed, appear relatively prosperous, and are joyfully standing on the steps of what looks to be a flourishing neighborhood built for a future that was violently cut short. These happy images remain, for me, tinged with the violence that continues through the present day with zero will for redress.⁴

Similarly, I hold conflicting feelings of hope and frustration as I consider our present day archives, on the precipice of repair.

Black freedom materials gain their fullest potency when the people who steward and tend to these archives choose to fully inhabit the role of caretaker of freedom and intimacy, not just of related materials.

But how can public archive caretakers practice more thoughtfulness, like what I have undertaken, as I considered, researched, and mined my personal and professional memories in and outside of the archives, while writing this essay? In what tangible ways may I be more tender with myself as I explore and expand how I may contribute my private pleasures and rest, with the people I choose, or to the legacy of free Black women pictured in the public domain, visibly unposed and unforced?