“If you go to the dining car”: Ibid., 119.
“Do not go to buy a hat”: Ibid., 95, 33.
“calm and undisturbed soul”: Ibid., 106.
“too familiar” on a bus or train: Ibid., 84.
“in her own way”: Ibid., vii.
“The arrangement of one’s hair”: Ibid., 43.
“Ain’t I a woman”: Sojourner Truth, Speech at the Women’s Rights Convention, Akron, Ohio, May 28–29, 1851.
“ ‘It’s so dreadful to be poor!’ ”: Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, in Alcott: Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys, ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Library of America, 2005), 7.
“You are old enough”: Ibid., 9.
“As for you, Amy”: Ibid.
“An old maid”: Ibid., 466.
“one can get on quite happily”: Ibid.
“Don’t laugh at the spinsters”: Ibid., 466–67.
“a handsome feature in his face”: Ibid., 355.
“nearly setting the chimney afire”: Ibid., 378.
“pity from your heart”: Ibid.
“wilderness of boys”: Ibid., 509.
“Christmas won’t be Christmas”: Ibid., 7.
“We don’t cheat in America”: Ibid., 135.
“Birds in their little nests”: Ibid., 9.
“But when I saw you all so well”: Ibid., 397.
“She could not say”: Ibid., 398.
“without mispronouncing”: Ibid., 48.
Edwin L. Jefferson, Ronald Nelson Jefferson, and Ruby Cozette Jefferson, 1908. The family lived in Coffeeville, Mississippi, but the photograph was probably taken in Jackson.
Irma James Armstrong and her mother, Lillian McClendon Armstrong, in Chicago, c. 1920. The photograph was for relatives in St. Louis, who’d sent Irma the handsome but too-big coat.
Irma, photographed by Gordon Parks, 1940–41. Parks was working at the South Side Community Art Center as its official photographer and learning his craft alongside such artists as Charles White and Margaret Goss Burroughs. Marva Louis, the model and wife of Joe Louis, had seen Parks’s fashion photography in Minneapolis and offered to help find him work if he moved to Chicago.
Bernard Jefferson and Ronald Jefferson with their band instruments in Los Angeles, c. 1922.
Irma and Ronald, just engaged, in Los Angeles, 1941.
United States Army Captain Ronald Jefferson at the all-Negro base in Fort Huachuca, Arizona, c. 1944. He was in the army from 1942 to 1946.
Irma and Ronald with their daughter Denise in their Bronzeville, Chicago, apartment, c. 1946.
Margo Jefferson, c. 1950.
Denise reflecting and reflecting on her image, c. 1951.
Margo and Denise in Canada, during the family’s cross-country trip, c. 1956.
Irma hosting a New Year’s Eve party in a mandarin Chinese jacket and with a Claudette Colbert bob, c. 1956.
U-High’s varsity cheerleaders. Co-captain Margo is in the back row, center, 1964.
Margo’s high school yearbook photo, 1964.
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