This 1919 portrait of two laundry workers looks routine until you notice the burn scars.
At first glance, it seemed like nothing more than a faded studio photograph, the kind you find by the hundreds in southern estate sales.
Two black women in starched white blouses seated side by side against a painted backdrop.
Their expressions composed and dignified.
It looked like a keepsake, maybe a momento of friendship or a gift for family back home.
But then one researcher noticed something in the way the women held their arms.
And once she saw it, she could not look away.
Her name was Elaine Metcafe, and she had been cataloging photographs for the Southeastern Regional History Archive in Birmingham for 11 years.
She had seen portraits of sharecroers, domestic workers, factory hands, and church congregations.
She had learned to read the small details that revealed class, region, and decade.
She knew how to spot a retouched negative, a borrowed dress, a borrowed dignity.
But this photograph, pulled from a box marked miscellaneous, pre-1925, stopped her cold.
The two women appeared to be in their 20s or early 30s.
They wore matching white blouses with high collars and dark skirts, the uniform of commercial laundry workers from that era.
Their hair was neatly pinned.
Their posture was upright.
The studio backdrop showed a painted garden scene, vines curling up a trellis.
It was the kind of aspirational setting that photographers used to give working people a moment of visual grace.
But Elaine noticed that the woman on the left held her right arm at an odd angle, her hand resting on her lap with the wrist turned inward.
At first, it looked like a nervous pose, maybe someone uncomfortable in front of the camera.
Then Elaine looked closer.
Along the underside of the forearm, just visible beneath the cuff of the blouse, was a pattern of discoloration.
The skin looked modeled, darker in some places, lighter in others, the texture uneven.
It was scar tissue, burns.
Elaine shifted her magnifying glass to the woman on the right, her arms were folded across her midsection, her hands tucked under her elbows, but her left hand was visible, and three of the fingers were misshapen, the knuckles fused at wrong angles.
The skin on the back of her hand had the same modeled tight quality.
More burns.
Elaine sat back in her chair.
She had seen industrial injuries in old photographs before.
Missing fingers on sawmill workers, crushed hands on railroad men.
But something about this image felt different.
The women had clearly posed to minimize the visibility of their scars.
The photographer had positioned them carefully, used the angle of their arms and the fall of their sleeves to obscure most of the damage.
And yet the scars were still there, still visible if you looked.
This was not just a pretty old photo.
Something here was wrong.
Ela Medaf had come to archival work through a winding path.
She had grown up in Montgomery, studied American history at Spellelman, and spent her 20s working in community archives and church record projects across Alabama and Georgia.
She had a particular interest in the visual culture of black life in the Jim Crow South, the way ordinary people used photographs to assert their humanity in a world designed to deny it.
She had written two monographs on the subject, one on African-American studio portraiture, and another on the circulation of lynching photographs.
She knew how images could lie, and she knew how they could accidentally tell the truth.
In her years at the archive, she had handled thousands of photographs.
Most were straightforward.
family portraits, church groups, school classes, funeral processions.
Some were more complicated images that showed the texture of segregation, the cramped quarters, the borrowed finery, the careful performance of respectability in front of white photographers.
But every now and then she encountered an image that seemed to hold a compressed story, something that demanded investigation.
This was one of those images.
She removed the photograph carefully from its sleeve and examined the back.
There was a studio stamp, partially faded but still legible.
Chambers portrait studio Memphis tenant.
Below the stamp, someone had written in pencil in a looping script two names, Ida and Celely.
No surnames, no date, though the style of the blouses and the photographic paper suggested the late 1910s.
Elaine made a note of the names in the studio.
Then she looked at the front of the photograph again, this time with a handheld digital scanner.
She captured a highresolution image and zoomed in on the details.
The burn scars on both women were extensive.
On the woman called Ida, the damage ran from her wrist to her elbow.
On See, it covered most of her left hand and appeared to extend up her arm as well, though the sleeve hid the full extent.
These were not cooking accidents or domestic mishaps.
These were the kinds of injuries that came from sustained contact with something extremely hot.
boiling water, steam pipes, industrial equipment.
Elaine thought about what she knew of laundry work in that era.
Commercialies in the South had employed large numbers of black women, often in brutal conditions.
The work involved massive vats of boiling water, heavy steam presses, and costic chemicals.
Burns were common.
Fatal accidents were not unheard of.
And yet the industry had operated with almost no oversight, no safety regulations, and no compensation for injured workers.
She wondered who these women were, how they had been hurt, whether they had ever received any help, and why someone had taken the trouble to have them photographed in a studio posed so carefully, their scars almost hidden, but not quite.
The next morning, Elaine began her research.
She started with the studio.
A search of Memphis city directories from 1910 to 1925 turned up a listing for Chambers Portrait Studio on Beiel Street, the heart of the black business district.
The proprietor was listed as William Chambers, and the studio appeared in the directories from 1908 to 1923, after which it vanished.
A brief notice in a 1923 issue of a black Memphis newspaper mentioned that William Chambers had died of pneumonia and that his wife had closed the studio.
Elaine found a few other photographs credited to Chambers in various archives.
They were competent studio portraits, nothing exceptional, but they showed a clear commitment to dignified representation.
Chambers had photographed families, church groups, and fraternal organizations.
He had also, according to one newspaper clipping, offered reduced rates to workers and their families.
It was possible that Ida and Cely had come to him for exactly that reason.
But who were they? The names alone were not enough.
Elaine needed more context.
She reached out to a colleague, Dr.
Marcus Ellison, a historian at the University of Memphis who specialized in African-American labor history in the early 20th century.
She sent him a scan of the photograph and asked if he could help identify any leads.
Marcus called her back within a day.
He had looked at the image and immediately recognized the significance of the burn scars.
“Those are steam burns,” he said.
“Classic laundry injuries.
The big commercialries in Memphis employed hundreds of black women, and the conditions were horrific.
12-hour shifts, no ventilation, no safety equipment.
The machines would malfunction constantly.
Women got scalded, crushed, maimed, and the owners did nothing.
He told her that he had been researching a particular laundry, the Bluff City Steam Laundry, which had operated in Memphis from 1901 to 1931.
It had been one of the largest commercialies in the city, processing linens for hotels, hospitals, and wealthy households.
It had employed almost exclusively black women, many of them recruited from the rural delta with promises of steady wages.
And it had a terrible safety record, though the full extent of the injuries had never been documented.
There were at least two major accidents that I know of, Marcus said.
One in 1914, one in 1919.
boiler explosions, steam pipe ruptures, multiple women injured each time, but the newspapers barely covered it.
The white papers ignored it entirely.
The black papers mentioned it, but briefly without names.
Elaine asked if there were any records that might identify the injured workers.
That’s the problem, Marcus said.
They’s own records were destroyed in a fire in 1932.
The only surviving documentation is scattered.
some hospital records, some church records, a few city permits.
I’ve been trying to piece it together for years.
He offered to share what he had.
Elaine accepted gratefully.
Over the following weeks, Elaine immersed herself in the world of early 20th century Memphis.
She read about the great migration, the flood of black workers leaving the rural south for cities where they hoped to find better opportunities.
She read about the industries that absorbed them, the meatacking plants and sawmills andries and domestic service positions.
She read about the conditions they encountered, the long hours and low pay and constant danger.
And she read about Bluff City Steam Laundry.
The laundry had been founded by a white businessman named Howard Greer, a former cotton factor who had diversified into commercial services after the blew wevil decimated the Delta cotton crop.
Greer had seen an opportunity in the city’s growing hotel and hospital sector.
Clean linens were in constant demand and labor was cheap.
He built a large brick building on the edge of the black neighborhood, installed the latest steam powered machinery, and began recruiting workers.
The recruitment practices were, by modern standards, coercive.
Greer’s agents traveled through the Delta targeting young black women who were struggling on tenant farms or fleeing abusive situations.
They promised good wages, room and board, and steady work.
What they did not mention was that the wages would be docked for housing, food, uniforms, and training.
They did not mention that workers who tried to leave before paying off their debts would be arrested for vagrancy or contract violation.
They did not mention the machines.
Elaine found fragments of this story in the records Marcus shared.
A 1916 article in a Black Memphis newspaper described conditions of near slavery at an unnamed laundry and called for a city investigation.
The investigation never happened.
A 1918 letter to the editor complained about colored girls being worked to death in the steameries.
The editor added a note saying that the matter was under consideration by civic leaders.
Nothing came of it.
And then Elaine found the hospital records.
They were incomplete, just a few pages from the intake logs of the city’s charity hospital covering the week of March 14th through 21, 1919.
Most of the entries were routine pneumonia, tuberculosis, childbirth complications.
But on March 17th, there were three admissions within an hour of each other.
All three were black women.
All three had suffered severe burns.
The cause was listed as industrial accident.
The names were Ida Sims, Cely Porter, and Mary Eda Williams.
Elaine stared at the page.
Ida and Celely, the same names written on the back of the photograph.
The hospital records were sparse.
Ida Sims, age 24, burns to right arm and torso.
Condition serious.
Sely Porter, age 22, burns to left hand and arm.
Condition serious.
Mary Williams, age 19, burns to face and chest.
Condition critical.
All three were listed as employees of BCSL Bluff City Steam Laundry.
There was no record of what had happened to them after admission.
The hospital logs did not include discharge information or follow-up notes, but Elaine now had names, ages, and a date.
She could search for more.
She found Ida Sims in the 1920 census living in a rooming house in Memphis listed as aundress private home.
She had survived her injuries and continued working, though apparently not at the Steam Laundry.
Celely Porter appeared in the same census, living in a different part of the city, also listed as a laress.
They had both stayed in Memphis.
Mary Williams did not appear in the 1920 census.
Elaine searched death records and found a brief entry.
Mary Eda Williams, aged 19, died March 23rd, 1919 at the City Charity Hospital.
Cause of death, septasemia following burns.
She had survived six days after the accident.
Elaine sat with this information for a long time.
Three women, all injured in the same accident.
One had died.
Two had survived, scarred for life, and someone at some point had taken those two survivors to a portrait studio and had their photograph taken.
Why? Elaine called Marcus again and shared what she had found.
He was quiet for a moment, then said, “I think I know what this might be.” He explained that in the years after major industrial accidents, black workers in their communities sometimes organized informal support networks.
They would raise money for medical bills, help injured workers find new jobs, and document what had happened so the story would not be lost.
Some of these efforts were connected to churches.
Others were connected to early labor organizing.
There was a group in Memphis in that period, Marcus said.
Mostly black women, mostly laundry workers.
They called themselves the Washer Women’s Benevolent Society.
They operated like a mutual aid organization, collecting dues, paying out benefits when someone was injured or sick.
They also kept records, informal records, but records.
He told her that the society had been active from around 1915 to 1928 when it had merged with a larger national organization.
Its papers had been donated to a historically black church in Memphis, the Greater Mount Zion Baptist Church, which still held them in its basement archive.
Elaine made arrangements to visit.
The church was a large brick building on the edge of what had once been the main black commercial district.
The neighborhood had changed over the decades.
Urban Renewal had torn down most of the old buildings, but the church remained a survivor.
The pastor, Reverend Altha Simmons, met Elaine at the door and led her down to the basement.
The archive was small, just a few filing cabinets and boxes of papers, but it was carefully organized.
Reverend Simmons explained that her predecessor had been a member of the Washer Women’s Benevolent Society in its final years, and had made sure the records were preserved.
Elaine found what she was looking for in a cardboard box labeled membership in minutes 1917 to 1922.
The Washer Women’s Benevolent Society had kept meticulous records, membership roles, monthly dues payments, benefit dispersements, and minutes from their regular meetings.
Elaine paged through the documents until she reached the spring of 1919.
The minutes from the March 1919 meeting described what had happened.
On the morning of March 17th, a steam pipe at Bluff City Steam Laundry had ruptured in the pressing room.
Boiling water and steam had sprayed across the work floor.
Three women had been directly in its path.
The foreman had initially refused to call for medical help, insisting that the injuries were not serious.
It was only after other workers threatened to walk out that a wagon was sent to take the injured women to the hospital.
The minutes recorded the names of the injured sisters Ida Sims, Cely Porter, and Mary Williams.
They noted that Sister Maretta’s condition was very grave and asked members to pray for her recovery.
A collection was taken up to help with medical expenses.
The following month’s minutes recorded Marietta’s death.
They also recorded something else.
The society had decided to commission a portrait of sisters Ida and Si to bear witness to what they have suffered and to honor their courage.
The portrait would be paid for from the society’s general fund and would be kept in the church as a reminder of the price our sisters pay for their labor.
Elaine read the passage again.
The photograph had not been a casual keepsake.
It had been a deliberate act of documentation.
The Washer Women’s Benevolent Society had wanted a record.
They had wanted proof.
But the story did not end there.
Elaine continued reading the society’s records and found that in the months following the accident, members had attempted to seek redress from Bluff City Steam Laundry.
They had written a letter to Howard Greer, the owner, asking for compensation for the injured women and for improvements to safety conditions.
Greer had not responded.
They had then attempted to file a complaint with the city’s newly formed industrial commission, which was supposed to oversee workplace safety.
The commission had declined to investigate, citing insufficient evidence of negligence.
Finally, they had approached a black attorney named Charles Meredith, who had agreed to take the case on contingency.
Meredith had filed a lawsuit against Bluff City Steam Laundry on behalf of Ida Sims and Cely Porter seeking damages for their injuries.
The lawsuit had gone nowhere.
The court had dismissed it on procedural grounds, ruling that the women had signed employment contracts that waved their right to sue for workplace injuries.
Meredith had appealed, but the appeals court had upheld the dismissal.
Elaine found a copy of the employment contract in the society’s files.
It was a single page, densely printed, full of legal language that would have been incomprehensible to most readers.
At the bottom was a space for a signature or mark.
The contract stated that the employee agreed to hold the employer harmless for any injury, illness, or death occurring in the course of employment.
It also stated that the employee owed the employer for the cost of transportation to Memphis, training, uniforms, and housing, and that the debt would be deducted from wages until paid in full.
These were peonage contracts, Elaine realized, debt contracts designed to trap workers in a cycle of obligation that was almost impossible to escape.
They were technically illegal under federal law, but the law was rarely enforced.
Employers used them throughout the South to bind black workers to brutal conditions, and when those workers were injured, the contracts protected the employers from any consequences.
Elaine brought her findings to the archives director, Dr.
Walter Chen, and proposed that the photograph be featured in an upcoming exhibition on African-American labor history.
She explained the story of the washer women’s benevolent society, the accident at Bluff City Steam Laundry, and the failed lawsuit.
She argued that the image was not just a portrait, but a piece of evidence, a document of resistance and resilience.
Dr.
Chen was cautious.
He agreed that the photograph was significant, but he worried about the exhibition’s framing.
The archive had recently received a major donation from a local foundation whose board included descendants of several prominent Memphis families.
Some of those families had owned businesses in the early 20th century.
Some of those businesses had employed black workers in conditions that might not withstand modern scrutiny.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t tell this story, Dr.
Chen said, but we need to be careful about how we present it.
We don’t want to make accusations we can’t prove.
Elaine pointed out that the evidence was clear.
The hospital records, the society’s minutes, the employment contracts.
This isn’t speculation, she said.
This is documentation.
These women were injured.
One of them died.
The company refused to take responsibility.
The courts protected the company.
This happened.
Dr.
Chen said he would need to consult with the board.
The board meeting took place 2 weeks later.
Elaine was invited to present her findings.
She brought copies of the photograph, the hospital records, the society’s minutes, and the employment contract.
She explained the historical context, the practices of industrialies, the exploitation of black women workers, and the legal mechanisms that protected employers from accountability.
The board listened politely.
Then the questions began.
One board member, a retired attorney, asked whether the employment contracts had been legally valid at the time.
Elaine explained that they had been used widely despite federal prohibitions on ponage and that enforcement had been almost non-existent.
Another board member who served on the foundation that had made the recent donation asked whether the exhibition would name specific companies or families.
Elaine said that the plan was to name Bluff City Steam Laundry, which no longer existed, and its owner, Howard Greer, who had died in 1941.
The board member frowned.
Greer is a prominent name in this city, she said.
His grandson is a major philanthropist.
I’m not sure it’s appropriate to drag his family into this.
Elaine kept her voice steady.
Howard Greer ran a company that injured and killed black women and then used legal tricks to avoid paying them anything.
That’s not an accusation.
That’s what the records show.
If we’re going to tell the history of labor in this region, we have to tell the whole history.
The discussion continued for another hour.
In the end, the board voted to approve the exhibition, but with a compromise.
The photograph would be displayed and the story of the accident and the lawsuit would be told.
But the exhibition text would avoid characterizing the practices of Bluff City steam laundry or making judgments about individual employers.
It would present the facts and let visitors draw their own conclusions.
Elaine accepted the compromise.
It was not everything she had wanted, but it was enough to get the story out.
The exhibition opened in the fall.
Elaine had worked with the curatorial team to create a display that centered the photograph and surrounded it with contextual materials.
The hospital records were reproduced on a nearby panel.
The society’s minutes were quoted at length.
A timeline showed the sequence of events from the accident to the lawsuit to the dismissal.
And there was one more element.
Elaine had spent months searching for descendants of Ida Sims and Celely Porter.
She had found them.
Ida Sims had married in 1922 and had three children.
She had worked as a laress for private households until her death in 1958.
Her granddaughter, a retired school teacher named Dorothy Sims Coleman, still lived in Memphis.
Elaine had contacted her and asked if she would be willing to speak at the exhibition opening.
Dorothy had agreed.
She stood in front of the photograph of her grandmother and spoke about what she had learned from Elaine’s research.
She said that her grandmother had never talked about the accident, but she had always kept her arms covered, even in summer.
She said that her grandmother had been a proud woman who had raised her children to work hard and expect nothing from anyone.
She said that seeing the photograph and reading the records had helped her understand something about her grandmother’s silence.
She wasn’t ashamed.
Dorothy said she was protecting herself.
She knew that nobody was going to help her, so she just kept going.
But the society, those other women, they tried.
They raised money.
They took her to a photographer.
They went to court.
They did everything they could and now a hundred years later people know that matters.
Celely Porter’s descendants had also been located.
Her great granddaughter, a nurse named Tamara Porter Jackson, had traveled from Chicago for the opening.
She stood with Dorothy in front of the photograph.
Two women whose ancestors had been burned in the same accident, bonded by a history they had never known.
In the months after the exhibition opened, Elaine received letters and emails from across the country.
People sent her photographs from their own family collections asking if she could help identify the stories behind them.
Historians and archivists reached out to share similar findings from other cities.
A documentary filmmaker contacted her about turning the story into a short film.
The attention was gratifying, but it also underlined how much work remained.
The photograph of Ida and See was one image among millions.
How many other portraits hung in museums and family albums, their subjects anonymous, their scars hidden, their stories untold? Elaine thought about what the washer women’s benevolent society had done.
They had known that the courts would not help them.
They had known that the newspapers would not cover their story.
They had known that the powerful would protect themselves.
And so, they had created their own record.
They had taken a photograph.
They had written minutes.
They had kept receipts.
They had done the slow, patient work of documentation, trusting that someday someone would find what they had left behind.
That was the real lesson of the photograph.
Not just the horror of what had happened, but the resistance that had followed.
The women had not accepted their fate silently.
They had organized.
They had demanded justice.
They had lost, but they had left evidence.
And now, a century later, that evidence had surfaced.
The scars that the photographer had tried to hide were visible again.
The names that the hospital records had reduced to entries in a ledger were spoken aloud.
The story that the courts had dismissed was part of the permanent collection of a regional archive.
Old photographs are not neutral.
They are staged.
They are posed.
They are designed to show what the powerful want seen.
But sometimes in the margins, in the shadows, in the angle of an arm or the texture of skin, the truth remains.
It waits for someone to look closely.
It waits for someone to ask the right questions.
It waits to be found.
Ida Sims and Cely Porter were photographed in 1919 to bear witness.
A 100 years later, the witness was finally heard.
