Celebrating Black Brides: Profile #69

Couple: Alice Clement and Robert Joseph Foster

Date of Wedding:  December 23, 1941

Place: Sisters Chapel, Spelman College (Atlanta, GA)

Officiant: Morehouse President Benjamin Mays

Fun facts:

The date of the wedding, December 23, was significant for the bride's family.  It was the day that her parents had married years earlier.  December 23 was also the birthday of the bride's grandfather, Bishop George C. Clement of the AME Zion Church

The bride wore an ivory satin gown fashioned with a long bodice.  The neckline was embroidered with seed pearls and rhinestones.  Her only jewelry was a strand of pearls given to her by the groom.

The bride graduated from Spelman College in June 1941 and was a student at Julliard School of Music at the time of the wedding.  The groom graduated from Morehouse College and Atlanta University. 

The bride was the daughter of Atlanta University President Rufus Clement.

In 2010, best-selling author and journalist Isabel Wilkerson profiled the groom in her award-winning book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Celebrating Black Brides: Profile #12

Couple: Bernice DeCosta and Dr. Albert Miles Davis

Date of Wedding:  September 5, 1948 at 6:30 pm

Place: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Charleston, SC)

Officiant: Reverend Turner W. Morris

Fun facts: 

The bride was a 1941 graduate of Avery Institute in Charleston and a 1945 graduate of Simmons College in Boston.  She also studied at Traphagen School of Fashion in 1946.

The groom graduated from Morehouse College and Howard University Medical School.  

The couple met in Atlanta while the bride taught art and fashion design at Spelman College.

The church was decorated with white gladiolas and palms for the wedding.

The bride’s dress was made entirely of Chantilly lace ornamented with irredescent sequins.  She had a Cathedral train and full-length veil.

The bride’s only jewelry was the strand of pearls that her mother wore on her own wedding day.

The bride was the great-granddaughter of William and Ellen Craft, the enslaved couple from Macon, Georgia, who escaped to the North in 1848.  Ellen Craft dressed as a man and pretended to be the white male owner of William during their successful runaway voyage.

The couple divorced in 1954.