White Wooden Beaded Clutch
date: label: Date
content: 20th century
notes: label: Caption
content: White wooden beads cover this rectangular clutch. Linen thread stitches the beads into a grid held by a cotton support. The lining’s three seams are machine-stitched, as is the metal zipper spanning the purse’s top. The clutch belonged to renowned scholar-librarian Dorothy Porter Wesley (1905-1995). After finishing high school, Porter Wesley attended Miner Normal School, which trained teachers for the District’s then-segregated African American schools. However, Miner’s librarian, Lula Allen, encouraged her to pursue library science. Porter Wesley graduated from Howard University in 1928 and became the first African American to earn a master’s degree in library science from Columbia University in 1932. For over four decades, she worked to organize and develop an unparalleled collection rooted in African American history that would become the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in Washington, DC.
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anacostia Community Museum Collection
creditLine: label: Cite As
content: Anacostia Community Museum, Smithsonian Institution
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: Anacostia Community Museum
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 1997.0020.0004
objectType: label: Type
content: purse
objectRights: label: Restrictions & Rights
content: CC0
physicalDescription: label: Medium
content: wooden beads, cotton, linen thread, metal zipper
label: Dimensions
content: 3 15/16 × 6 1/4 × 13/16 in. (10 × 15.8 × 2 cm)