My wife has one word for Ruby Singleton Blakeney.
Fabulous.
Ruby is a tall woman with a broad smiling face. She’s a well-known community activist who brings a clear sense of style wherever she goes.
So, when Blakeney, an art and wardrobe consultant, stood up at a meeting Tuesday night, she looked, well, fabulous.
She wore a flowing St. John knit pantsuit, matched with Red Soles flats and accented with a long rope of pearls. Her ensemble accentuated her stature, her close-cropped salt and pepper hair and her message to Black women across the United States.
Normally, it's a bad idea to write about how women with a political message dress. But in this case, it is the message.
Blakeney wants women to use fashion to celebrate "separately but together" on the day Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is sworn in as the first Black woman to be a U.S. Supreme Court justice.
“I propose that we all get dressed up in our black and white,” she told the Caucus of African American Leaders. “It can be black jeans, it could be with white whatever, and pearls, and spend the day ... to go out to places where they have the event televised and ... and celebrate.”
Blakeney is launching the idea with hopes that it goes viral, that women across the nation – particularly Black women – will wear black with white pearls, real or from the Dollar Store, to symbolize Jackson’s black judicial robes.
“It’s about coming together and solidarity.”
Ruby Singleton Blakeney spoke at the Caucus of African American Leaders in Annapolis. (Rick Hutzell)
So, how do you make this happen? How does an idea for a symbolic gesture reach the national consciousness?
Blakeney is turning to social media, with plans to spread it through one of her Facebook groups. Full disclosure, the Bulletin newsletter platform I use to publish Meanwhile, in Annapolis, is a Facebook project.
Blakeney's group, however, isn’t just your run-of-the-mill local collection of friends with a shared interest. It’s Souls for Democracy and has more than 178,000 members who could amplify the idea to many more.
The group started as Sisters of Color Strong for Biden during the 2020 campaign and has since moved on to other projects. Blakeney is one of the administrators.
Women around the country joined the group to support Joe Biden, energized by his promise to nominate the first Black woman to the high court.
One of them is Genevieve Torri, co-owner of the new Annapolis-based social media consulting firm Phronesis. Creating a viral groundswell for dressing the same on a single day is a difficult task, she said, but having a base to start is a good beginning.
“In her case, she’s lucky,” Torri said. “She already has a massive outreach from that group that was used during the presidential election.”
Torri understands using social media to push political ideas. She worked as director of Mayor Gavin Buckley’s successful campaign for a second term. Clients seek her advice on getting an idea to the largest number of people through steps such as social media influencers. In Blakeney’s case, that might be someone in the fashion industry.
“A lot of it is right time, right place,” Torri said.
If black with pearls for Justice Jackson succeeds, it will join a list of recent fashion choices used as a statement.
It can be individual, as when U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wore a white gown with “Tax the Rich” scrawled on the back last spring for the Met Gala in New York City. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton did it in 2018, wearing a white pantsuit to honor suffragists. Vice President Kamala Harris made pearls and high-top Chucks a thing.
It's Republicans, too. President Donald Trump filed to trademark the phrase “Make America Great Again” a decade ago, and while there are plenty of places you can buy MAGA hats, his campaign sold the "official” version for $25 a pop.
Perhaps no fashion as a symbol stands out more in recent memory than the Pink Pussyhat, another grassroots effort that worked. Project Pussyhat was started by two women in California. They wanted a statement about sexual harassment, particularly Trump’s “Hollywood Access” hot mic moment when he said he felt free to grab any woman by the genitals.
Jayna Zweiman and Krista Suh proposed that women going to the 2017 Women’s March weeks after Trump’s inauguration wear bright pink hats knitted by women who stayed home, sharing the protest separately but together.
The knitting pattern was spread via social media, and women formed groups to make the hats. Hundreds of thousands of women wore them that day.
One was Wendi Winters, a colleague who was killed in the 2018 attack on the Capital Gazette newsroom. Wendi had a background in the fashion industry and understood how to make a statement with what you wear.
She told me she planned to attend the march in Washington and brought her Pussyhat into my office for the discussion. I believe that journalists should swallow their politics because people question their objectivity when they take sides – even when it's nothing they cover.
But I'm a defender of First Amendment freedoms first, and she knew that. I told Wendi that if she went, I'd prefer not to see photos of her on social media wearing the hat.
Wendi agreed. She proudly came back the following Monday to show me photos of her day in D.C. Her hat was a proud symbol of her beliefs. Today, Pink Pussyhats have been worn around the world.
Hundreds of thousands of women work the Pink Pussyhat during the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C., (Peter Kaminski/Flicker)
That isn’t what Blakeney wants. She doesn’t see herself as a drumbeating politician but rather someone who sees something Black women can admire and respect in Jackson's achievement.
“I’m not trying to start a movement,” she said. “We would show ... that we are in support of her. Anyone that day you see in a black suit and pearls would be part of it.”
Biden appointed Brown in February and a divided Senate voted to confirm her 53-47 on April 8. In a White House speech the next day, the judge said the milestone also belongs to Black women across the country. “We've made it. All of us,” she said, according to published reports.
Jackson will remain on the U.S. Court of Appeals until she is sworn in after Justice Stephen Breyer's retirement. No date has been set, but the next session of the court begins on Oct. 3.
“We should all be proud in the knowledge that we, the African American community, played a major part and integral role in delivering the vote to not only President Biden but also the two senators from Georgia whose votes were very important for Justice Jackson,” Blakeney said.
She watched Jackson's confirmation hearings and the Senate vote. It confirmed for her how much harder it was for a Black woman to get through the process. She was especially disappointed in the no vote by Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate. He represents South Carolina, Blakeney's home state.
Blakeney doesn't understand his thinking, nor that of other conservative political figures of color, like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas or former HUD Secretary Ben Carson.
"We'll move forward without them," she said.
Being a first always resonates but for Black women, maybe it is something more because it is so recent.
It's been less than four years since Elizabeth Sheree Morris became the first Black woman to serve as a judge for Anne Arundel County Circuit Court.
Former alderwoman Cynthia Carter, the first Black woman elected to the City Council, was sitting near Blakeney at Tuesday's meeting. So was Vickie Gipson, the first Black woman elected as a judge on the county Orphans Court.
These aren't historic figures. They're in-the-room examples of just how recently these milestones were reached. It's still personal.
Blakeney has helped celebrate these groundbreakers, but she isn't known in Annapolis as a political activist. In the 40 years since she moved here, she's owned an art studio and worked as a department store clothing consultant.
She uses those experiences today as a consultant on fine art and clothes. She continues working as a volunteer with a special focus on the arts, children and women. I've known her for years as one of those people who seems to be everywhere in the community.
She settled on Black and pearls because it’s a form of dress attire and the color of judicial robes. It also, she said, just looks good.
“We could have chosen anything. But black on black with pearls?” she said, pausing to emphasize the impact of the combination.
Carl Snowden, a longtime Annapolis civic activist who helped create the Caucus of African American Leaders, doesn't know how far Blakeney's idea will go.
But he predicts there will be black outfits and pearls in Annapolis when Jackson takes the oath. Blakeney plans to spread the date when it's set, and the names of any places offering discounts to attract women celebrating Brown's achievement separately but together.
And Blakeney plans to set an example.
“There will be people who follow her lead,” Snowden said.
Carl Snowden, convener of the African American Caucus of Leaders, called women to the front of Tuesday's meeting to celebrate their role in elections, the Civil Rights and other causes. (Rick Hutzell)
Rick Hutzell is a nationally recognized journalist. He lives in Annapolis. Contact him at meanwhileannapolis@gmail.com.
