BLACK INK by Stephanie Stokes Oliver - Harpers Bazaar 'Fashioning Freedom'

Harpers Bazaar | January 6, 2022

The daughter of parents who lived through and marched in the Civil Rights Movement, Stephanie Stokes Oliver was raised on the legacy of fashion as a gateway to a brighter political future.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, has an historic past as the site of the 1965 Bloody Sunday march for voting rights. What’s little known, though, is for years before that, after it opened in 1940, the town’s teenagers saw it as just another scenic background for prom pics and photo shoots on sunny Sundays. My mother, Josephine, around 16 at that time, was one of those who with her friends posed after church at the bridge.

Among our family’s treasured possessions is a fuzzy black-and-white 8-by-10 photo, taken, mounted, and signed by her own cousin Frank, just 20 days younger than she, as the budding photographer. Josephine is wearing a dark suit dress with white zigzag piping. Totally accessorized, she has on white gloves, is holding a flat envelope purse, and is wearing a turban that lends a sophistication beyond her young age. There are additional photos of that day with two other teenagers styling and smiling in a decades-old photo album.

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