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Jitterbugging in a Juke Joint on a Saturday Night, Clarksdale, Mississippi
Jitterbugging in a Juke Joint on a Saturday Night, Clarksdale, Mississippi
Jitterbugging in a Juke Joint on a Saturday Night, Clarksdale, Mississippi
Photograph and Ditital Image © Kalamazoo Institute of Arts. Not for reproduction or publication.
On View
Not on view
Object number2003.5

Jitterbugging in a Juke Joint on a Saturday Night, Clarksdale, Mississippi

Artist (American, 1910-1990)
Date1939
Mediumgelatin silver print
Dimensionsmat: 20 × 16 in. (50.8 × 40.6 cm)
sheet: 10 × 8 in. (25.4 × 20.3 cm)
image: 7 3/4 × 6 3/4 in. (19.7 × 17.1 cm)
Credit LinePermanent Collection Fund
Exhibition History"At Work and Play," KIA Long Gallery (Apr. 1 - July 22, 2005). "Framing Moments: Photography from KIA's Permanent Collection," KIA (Feb. 6 - May 16, 2021) Label TextMarion Post Wolcott was on assignment for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) of the United States government photographing conditions related to the cotton industry in Mississippi. The FSA’s mission was to aid poor farmers, sharecroppers, and migrant workers during the Great Depression. Venturing into a juke joint was stretching the parameters of her job, but in doing so Wolcott made one of her favorite and best-known images of life in the South. Despite capturing a moment of sheer joy and energy, the situation was actually dangerous for everyone involved—both Wolcott and her subjects. Depending on the community, racial hostility was so extreme that even talking to a stranger who was a young, attractive, white female could imperil the lives of local black people. To quell any potential of uncertainty, Wolcott arranged to be accompanied by the son of one of the owners of a nearby plantation. There also happened to be a uniformed white police officer present among the crowd, who figured in one of the nine pictures Wolcott shot that day. Wolcott was the first full-time female photographer to work for the FSA. Between 1938 and 1942, she made more than 9,000 images across America, all now housed in the collection of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. [Framing Moments Exhibition, 2021]