Material objects are rare in the archival record that I’ve come across for this particular period in the history of incarceration and its the youth it invovled, so this small blue bow pinned to the top of one of Sadie’s letters to Cross made me pause.

Another archival object with no name or context, this ribbon, similar to the unnamed photo earlier in the exhibit, is limited in the concrete details it can tell us about its owner and her intention, but also limitless in the possibilties it about its owner and her intentions that it leaves. Is it Sadie’s bow? Why did she give it to Cross as a momento? What did she want Cross to feel? What did she feel? In the space between knowing and not knowing, Sadie gains back a bit of agency and power and that words and storytelling cannot take.

In looking for the “wayward” women of the archive, we discover the possibility of the unknown and the ways these women and girls have constructed their own Rebel Archive and complicated and preserved parts of their stories.

 

Questions:

What do you imagine about the blue bow?

How do different types of objects (image, text, material object) contribute to different types of archives?

What story did this archive/history make you want to tell or find out more about?