The Grave of Hackless Jenkins, Probably South Carolina. Doris Ulmann, photographer (American, 1882 - 1934) 1929–1930 This image is one of three pictures by Doris Ulmann in Julia Peterkin’s 1933 Roll, Jordan, Roll illustrating a discussion of the Bury League, a cooperative society established to provide respectable funerals for its members (). Peterkin (1880-1961) relates the story of an elderly woman who, to the relief of her neighbors, volunteered to be the first buried in a new graveyard. She made this brave decision in the face of a superstition that said, "the first
The Grave of Hackless Jenkins, Probably South Carolina. Doris Ulmann, photographer (American, 1882 - 1934) 1929–1930 This image is one of three pictures by Doris Ulmann in Julia Peterkin’s 1933 Roll, Jordan, Roll illustrating a discussion of the Bury League, a cooperative society established to provide respectable funerals for its members (). Peterkin (1880-1961) relates the story of an elderly woman who, to the relief of her neighbors, volunteered to be the first buried in a new graveyard. She made this brave decision in the face of a superstition that said, "the first person buried in a graveyard never rests easy." Although she had not joined the Bury League or accepted other "changes that crept into the plantation" (supposedly Peterkin's family plantation, Lang Syne), the League brought out the hearse for her funeral and made it a grand celebration. "When the low mound of earth was smoothed and the Bury League white paper flowers laid on it, things she prized on earth were put with them: a clock that had not ticked for many years, the cup and saucer she used, a glass lamp filled with kerosene, and a china vase holding fresh blossoms from those growing around her doorstep." The photographer Walker Evans (1903-1975), who would visit Lang Syne in the mid-1930s, was also fascinated with the household objects that decorated otherwise simple Southern graves. He later photographed graves in Alabama (see , , , ), and his collaborator, James Agee, would depend upon these images as he wrote Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941). (For another Ulmann work that was used as an illustration for Roll, Jordan, Roll, see and ).\n\nAdapted from Judith Keller. Doris Ulmann, In Focus: Photographs from the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1996), 56. ©1996, J. Paul Getty Trust.
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Photo credit: © piemags/GB24 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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