Kéla B. Jackson

On November 14, 1960, six years after the landmark decision Brown v. Board of Education, Ruby Bridges became the first Black student to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, Louisiana. Bridges, donned in a crisp pinafore with a white Peter Pan collar, entered the elementary school flanked by U.S. Marshals. Her gaze cast intently down at her Mary Janes trimmed with the white lace of her socks, Bridges embodied stoic determination in the face of vitriol. Bridges’ entrance into William Frantz emblematized how images of children could serve as effective symbols of freedom and futurity. “UnBecoming: Lessons on Rupture, Reclamation, and Black Girlhood” examines how Black girls, and their girlhood, propelled generations of artists’ aesthetic practices of reconfiguration—suture, reclamation, and rupture—that altered the terms of girlhood.

This dissertation addresses the understudied stakes of visual representations of Black girls and Black girlhood in service of civic activism in the United States from the early twentieth century to the present. Examining a range of materials—from dolls and children’s literature to contemporary art and visual culture—this dissertation presents the first sustained art historical consideration of visual representations of Black girls and Black girlhood. This dissertation examines the works of artists Clarissa Sligh, Faith Ringgold, and Deborah Roberts, who build upon social-activist photography to posit modes of redress and fabulation within their practices. As these artists contend with the limits placed on Black girls and girlhood, they reveal the power of rupture—fracturing the image and narrative, intervening in space—as critical to Black feminist art histories that shift the terms of citizenship and humanity.