The black and white photos were part of a stack in a low-cut cardboard box in a glass case at the auction house. I pick up early photos like these from time to time, and usually spend a few minutes flipping through them to find some that are striking and different.
I found two of them in this stack, and pulled them out based on the stories I saw in them. One had a few illegible words on the back that could have identified the year or the photographer. The other bore no information.
They looked to be from the same era, around the 1940s and 1950s, but they told entirely different stories. One was idyllic, painting a romantic picture of one of those homogenous small-town diners that were the heart of a community (but wouldn’t serve African Americans and some other folks). It was a time that some in our divisive country today would like to go back to (it won’t happen!).
The other more dramatic photo showed the wedding of two women, a coupling that long had been forced into hiding but now has emerged from the shadows to openly reveal itself (and that some still want to squash!).
On the surface, they’re just photos, but each carries a political and social message implicit in what it shows. Depending on who you are and your own experiences – or the experiences of your parents and grandparents – the story that each tells will vary widely. For me, the diner scene represents a period that clearly left out a large part of the country’s black population through exclusionary Jim Crow laws and social customs.
I’m curious how the “lesbian” wedding was identified as lesbian. Could one of the women be the mother of the bride? Kissing on the lips is common in some families. Not being contentious, just curious. You’ve found history if that is a wedding. Thank you.
Sorry, but that kiss looks too romantic for them to be mother and daughter. It looks more like a lovers’ kiss. There was no background info on the back of the photo, and my description is based on what I see in the photo. The mothers appear to be the two older women on both sides of the couple, who appear to be wearing their white wedding outfits.
The photos or the messages there in are from long ago but I wonder how many people would apply them to today.
The lesbian couple may have lived in Massachusetts. They had a practice in the past called a “Boston marriage.”