Century south. One of the jumping off points aside from the conversations amongst southern about how southern women were beautiful is the fact that white southern women have a track record of doing very well and ms. America pageants. And we can document this and see the disproportionate number of titles given how many Southern States they are. They did especially well in the 50s and 60s. Some of the nations most beautiful girls lists assembled for a beauty contest. I love a parade, dont you. Miss texas, no Deputy Sheriff but interesting. Miss alabama. Ms. California, susan allen bradley. The winner, ms. Alabama and tears for joy. One thing that can be difficult to remember is a lot of the practices and rituals that we associate with beauty were very controversial in the south. In the early 20th century talking about the teens in the 20s, there was a lot of controversy about white southern women entering beauty contest. They would have been bathing beauty contest. These wouldve been held at seaside resorts like a galveston, texas. Up and down the eastern coast in virginia, north carolina, south carolina. In the contest were held there. But not everybody relished this development because respectable what southern were not supposed to put in swimsuits and stand up before a group of onlookers and strut around in a swimsuit. There is a lot of controversy. From what i can see the one thing that helps it is to become an agricultural fair which we know every county had an agricultural fair every year. What is the important in terms of beauty contest is the fair is always about helping firemen and women leave more productive lives. And hopefully growing better cotton, tobacco, corn and internalizing lessons that are being taught by demonstration agents. That are being sent out by landgrant colleges. These agents are sent to teach men how to grow the crops. There sent to teach women how to also do it they need to do to contribute to their household economy. Early on in the process some of the agents start to sponsor better baby contest. A better baby contest is what it says. A contest in which farm women would bring their babies to be judged and the best baby would win the prize. And this a be away for the farm families to learn the important lessons they needed to learn in terms of hygiene, nutrition because there were a lot of problems in the rural south. So these farm families needed these lessons. So the better baby contest judged these infants and sometimes there be toddlers on the basis of which would be the best baby. The issue is that there would be a fine line between the healthiest best baby and the baby that looks the most attractive. So the agricultural fair had a way of introducing a contest is about judging the body. A very young body. By about the 1930s beauty contest arent seeming quite as controversial as they once were. Because you can look at a Health Review in which you have this essentially in swimsuits and it doesnt take much to get to beauty contest. But what really took the scales was the depression. What happens is you have all of these areas in the south suffering. Your prices for crops have dropped. You have agricultural trade boards that are trying to figure out how they can sell their tobacco, their cotton, to national and International Markets at a time when this not a lot of money. So what these agricultural trade boards do is tap into the tradition, better baby contest, Health Reviews, and they start to have explicitly beauty contest for rule woman that are associated with agricultural festivals. You start to see tobacco queens, tobacco queens, punic queens, et cetera. The idea was to get the benefits of a beauty contest. We want to use beautiful women to sell Agricultural Products across the nation, across the rest of the world. There might be a little bit of opposition send this is a beauty contest and to be judged just for their beauty. By putting them in the agricultural product, the sponsors found a way to deflect criticism. Seek and find interesting pictures of these women wearing tobacco outfits while they are on stage being judged. The thing that happens is light beauty queens serves the Public Relations function for the white sox. Dwight south did not always farewell. They reacted violently for equality. We have seen the famous images in places like mississippi and birmingham, alabama where white southerners and the police are attack dogs and fire hoses. One of the things these beauty queens could do is serve as Public Relation ambassadors and blunt the impact of the negative images. Seek a look at the issue of Time Magazine or newsweek from the followed 1956. One of the things he will see our pictures of what southerners fighting the local School System and white rioters throwing rocks at the press, attacking americans and at the same issue youll see a picture of a newly crowned ms. America who hails from the south. So, the images serve this function that says, we are not a region of violence, we are not a region of brutality, region that is home to a tradition of grace and tranquility and beauty. Not just southerners, but all of america and all americans come to see what southern women as especially beautiful as the rightful owners of female physical beauty. For black women, this is really difficult. Black women have struggled since slavery to claim beauty and for white women to be given the stage is a slap in the face. There are a few examples of black southern women talking about this and how they present the consequences of this. I think if you want to say in a nutshell with white southern women that white southern womens relationship to beauty their pursuit to beauty more often than not served and strengthen jim crow. Serve to strengthen segregation. Black women by contrast more often than not their pursuit of beauty was more about trying to upend it jim crow or segregation. Restrict it, fight it, attack it in some way. So, one of the things i was interested in is the way in which beauty could provide black southern women with an occupation early on, specifically being a beautician. I think a lot of americans today if they seen Something Like steel magnolias something that came out in the 80s one of the americans might associate certainly it they become important but early on the beauty shop as an institution is intra call and block womens lives in the south and this is because there were a number of black female entrepreneurs in the business in the south. Some became quite famous annie malone is another, but theyre actually dozens and dozens all over the region but if you open up any africanamerican newspaper in the earliest 20 century, you will see ads placed by the local beautician who has created her own system to help black women groom their hair. But whats revealing is a week or two that were dealing with census data and i decided to look at the number of women who had applied a. Guest shins in the south and i in 1920 the number of black beauticians in Southern States was extraordinary. If far outpaced the number of white women in Southern States who identified as petitions. Son mississippi for example, there were over 500 black women who are beauticians in 1920. There were 22 white women who are beauticians. So what black women figured out early on is this is a line of work that paid, that gave them some flexibility and crucially gave them Financial Independence from whites because if you are a selfemployed businesswoman and you dont have to answer to a white boss in the jim crow south, thats going to be very attractive, and it was. So, by the time the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement began, these beauty parlors emerged as crucial sites to the movement. I would argue that they played all through the century but here you see them taking the sun during the single rights movement. So and moody, wrote comingofage in mississippi. She was arrested in a jackson city sitting and 63. One of the things that happened in that setting is all of the white people behind her doused her with condiments. This happened a lot she leaves the city and ends up eventually retreating into a beauty shop. She knows the beautician will be sympathetic to her. And will help her and repair her body in full in the wake of this humiliating attack. So the women who are there insisted that she be moved to the head of the line so the beautician can wash her hair. She washes all of the gunk router. Something like beauty, it was very much tangled up it was with the realities of jim crow. The pursuit of beauty was one way to strengthen jim crow. It was one way to attack jim crow. A set of rituals and practices that were available to women living in the south. How they used it depended upon who they were and what they wanted it was there in use. The women did use it in this way. Youre watching book tv on cspan2 in prime time. Television for serious readers. Tonight, a look back at some of the stops on the cspan city store. Gettysburg is a place that took place over three days a 90degree heat. There are thousands of courses on the battlefield. There thousands of corpses on the battlefield they are always riding it so you think about the stench and then you think about a Field Hospital where limbs are being so theres an incredible amount of blood. Once you get infections that setting, things like angering, it smells awful. These women had to deal with horrific sights and sounds of things they were not accustomed to