Ayana Flewellen

In the midst of racialized servitude, sexual exploitation, and economic disenfranchisement, that marked the enslavement and post-emancipation eras in the Danish West Indies (1754-1917), Afro-Crucians were styling their hair with combs, lacing glass beads around their necks, dyeing coarse-cotton fabric with indigo-berry and vine sorrel, and fastening buttons to adorn their bodies and dress their social lives. My research explores how race, gender, and status/class shaped Afro-Crucian identity formation from slavery through freedom. I investigate the complex interplay between structural forms of oppression and agency by focusing on the ways enslaved, and later free Afro-Crucians utilized dress to negotiate racism, sexual exploitation, and exploitive capitalism. Analyzing material culture and documentary data through an intersectional Black feminist theoretical framework, I posit that quotidian dress practices – how people dressed their bodies in their everyday lives – constitute the body and form identities through their repetitive daily nature.