|
A graduate of Temple University with a focus on emerging African countries, Rosemary E. Reed
Miller has written for Women’s Wear Daily, Fairchild Publications, The Miami Herald, The Miami
News, The Amsterdam News, and The Daily Gleaner (a Jamaican publication) and has been featured in
The Washington Post, The Afro-American, Dagen Nyeter (Sweden), Black Enterprise, Essence,
Glamour, and many other publications. She opened the unique gift and fashion apparel shop, Toast and
Strawberries, in the Dupont Circle area of Washington, D. C. in 1966 – “a tough year to open a business
in downtown Washington.....for an African American woman.”
In this new edition of her popular book, The Threads of Time, The Fabric of History, Ms. Miller gives
38 profiles of African American designers and dressmakers from 1850 to the present. Among these is
Ann Lowe, who designed the Jackie Kennedy wedding dress, the most photographed wedding dress in
American history; Clara Greenlee Jones, who became the dressmaker to the family of the man who
became the first president of what is now Memphis Light Gas & Water (she was buried in Elmwood
Cemetery in 1939 along with her daughter, Elvira); Elizabeth Keckley, who designed for Mary Lincoln
(the dress she designed for Mrs. Lincoln to wear to one of the President Lincoln’s inaugurations is
displayed in the First Ladies exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum); and Rosa Parks, who worked as a
seamstress for a department store in Montgomery, Alabama.
The public is invited to attend this important lecture without admission fee.
For more information, contact Tom Mendina, 901-678-4310, tmendina@memphis.edu or Ms. Kay Kroboth at kroboth@memphis.edu.
|
