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An early page of Kennesaw Junior College’s (KJC) 1970 yearbook, and already a male centered tone is struck. There are women in the pictures, in fact in all of them on this page, but they are not the focus of this page. As we discussed in one of the last classes we had where we discussed the 14th amendment, “mankind” in most cases is currently interpreted as meaning ‘everyone’ in the realm of legal scholarship. That may be the case now, but it was not the case in a casual publication like a small college yearbook in 1970. The women in these pictures are not the focus, the men in the pictures are, evidenced by the title of the page.

Montage 1970, Student Publications. Montage and Talisman, 1967-1995; KSU/51/02; Department of Museums, Archives, and Rare Books, Kennesaw State University.

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Pictured here are four couples, the winners and three runners up of the “Mr and Miss KJC” contest from 1970. I found this interesting because it has a much more high school like vibe to it than I would expect from a college, even a junior college. That’s not a dig at community colleges, I went to one myself, it just makes it all the more surprising. I can only imagine the kinds of teasing and pressure that these couples could have faced in a small southern college to 'make themselves official'.

Montage 1970, Student Publications. Montage and Talisman, 1967-1995; KSU/51/02; Department of Museums, Archives, and Rare Books, Kennesaw State University.

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The following page after the winners of Mr and Miss KJC are shown, the rest of the contestants are shown. The most interesting part of this followup picture is that every single couple on this page is “sponsored” by an on-campus club or organization. Only one couple on the previous page had a sponsor, and they were the first runners up. The sponsors here interest me because, though we can’t know exactly how they were chosen, it isn’t hard to believe that if any of these pairs weren’t already couples that they faced some amount of pressure from their sponsoring groups to participate in the contest to gain the group some kind of attention or recognition. This would create an environment ripe for all kinds of harassment to both members of the couple, though the harassment would most likely fall on the woman over the man.

Montage 1970, Student Publications. Montage and Talisman, 1967-1995; KSU/51/02; Department of Museums, Archives, and Rare Books, Kennesaw State University.

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*I had to censor this image because Padlet kept removing the image and then emailing me about "uploading inappropriate content" and threatened to suspend my account. Ironic isn't it?*

Keeping with the year 1970, this is page 9 in Southern Poly's 1970 year book, and one of the first images of a woman in the yearbook. There's a much more noticeable lack of women as compared to the 1970 Kennesaw Junior College yearbook. Though Southern Poly at this time is even smaller than the very small KJC, I still found it interesting that the faculty and student body seemed generally OK with what is at bare minimum erotic photos displayed in what appears to be a classroom or other common work space. Imagine being one of the very few women at this school, you go into your classroom or study space and see a topless model plastered up on the wall in a photo the size of the blackboard. (As stated above, Padlet forced me to censor this image, but it is a picture showing the models' full bare breasts.) This shows the ‘boys club’ nature of higher education in the 1970s, especially in small technical schools.

Technician's Log, 1970, Series 2, Box 5, Folder 1, Technician's Log, 1948 - 1997, SP/51/02, Kennesaw State University Archives.

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Another student dance, which seemed to be quite popular in this era. Pictured here is Susan Perry, the winner of “Miss STI” (terrible acronym, but I guess they still called them venereal diseases at this point) 1970. The most interesting part of this is that she is not a student at Southern Poly, she was a student at West Georgia College and sponsored by Alpha Beta Sigma presumably her sorority. This speaks again to the lack of women enrolled at Southern Poly which begs the question of why have a student dance at all? There didn’t seem to be a Mr. STI crowned, so what kind of attention did Perry attract as the winner of what was essentially a beauty contest at a school she didn’t even attend? The possibility of harassment would have been astonishingly high, and the possibility of protection for Perry and consequences for the harassers astonishingly low.

Technician's Log, 1970, Series 2, Box 5, Folder 1, Technician's Log, 1948 - 1997, SP/51/02, Kennesaw State University Archives.

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This page takes us back to KJC and forward a few years to 1976. It is of particular interest because it is the first dedicated page to just the children on campus from any of the yearbooks so far. Not only is it dedicated to the presence of children on campus, all of them are shown either solo or with a male parent/guardian. This was surprising to me, as women historically and currently bear most of the responsibility for child rearing especially in the earlier years of a child's life as all children here appear to be between the ages of 1-5. The likelihood that these men are ultra-progressive egalitarian parents is low in my opinion, it is far more likely that the mothers of these children are not students and instead are stay at home parents or have a job outside the household. We also can’t be sure if these children are the children of students or faculty, while either are possible some of the settings of the picture point to at least one of the children being the child of a staff member. The photo of the young girl in the dress standing in a hallway of what appears to be faculty offices I am almost certain is the child of a professor who accompanied her parent to work that day for one reason or another. Another reason that these pictures have a darker undertone is specifically because they are not pictured with their mothers. After all, would it not be considered a “bad look” for a young mother to be a student in class with her young child and not at home, married and ‘kept’ as a proper southern woman should be?

Montage 1976, Student Publications. Montage and Talisman, 1967-1995; KSU/51/02; Department of Museums, Archives, and Rare Books, Kennesaw State University.

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Another picture of the same student dance where we met Miss STI Susan Perry. Instead this picture focuses on the dancers out on the floor, not sponsored by anyone. Of particular interest is the woman in the rightmost photo in the striped dress, flipping off the photographer with her shoes off. She seems annoyed, having potentially been pestered by the photographer throughout the night in order to get pictures of the women who were actually in attendance at this dance. She may have been a student, she may have been the date or guest of a student, we can’t know for sure. Her expression in this photo reminds me of the unsolicited cat-calling done to women still today about their appearances, telling them to “smile more” and harassing them for their time and attention. This is in an era where the ability to have your picture taken at a moment's notice during a night out was basically unheard of, so her reaction to having her photo taken when she’s in the ‘shoes off’ stage of the night is not only expected, it’s relatable.

Technician's Log, 1970, Series 2, Box 5, Folder 1, Technician's Log, 1948 - 1997, SP/51/02, Kennesaw State University Archives.

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This page stuck out to me because of the student organizations listed on the bottom right of the leftmost photograph. In the following pages, most but not all of these organizations have a group photo in the pages following. One of the few that does not have a dedicated section with their group picture is the Black Student Alliance, listed third to last in the list. Until this section, the mention of black students and black people was seldom to none. There were few black students in group pictures from the earlier yearbooks from both colleges, a handful in the student pictures, and less than 5 black women combined in the student head shots from both schools. Though again the Black Student Alliance is not the only student organization without a dedicated group photo, them being one of the very few groups to not have one feels like less of a bug and more of a feature.

Montage 1976, Student Publications. Montage and Talisman, 1967-1995; KSU/51/02; Department of Museums, Archives, and Rare Books, Kennesaw State University.

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This page is actually the page before the Black Student Alliance pictures, which I also found interesting as it gives the feeling of these performers being the ‘opening act’ for the Black Student Alliance. I wanted to highlight these photos, because they show a few things I find interesting. First, the woman singing aside from looking really cool overall, takes up the majority of the pictures on this page. In fact she’s the only repeat subject on these pages because the two men pictured are different dudes. The male subject in the bottom right photo is interesting as well, he’s shown wearing a white shirt with flowy bell sleeves that appears to have lace or some kind of ruffled/ruched fabric around the neckline. He’s wearing all kinds of jewelry, with stacked bracelets and necklaces with beads in his hair. He’s subverting stereotypical masculinity in his outfit, especially the masculine archetype prescribed to black men.

Montage 1980, Student Publications. Montage and Talisman, 1967-1995; KSU/51/02; Department of Museums, Archives, and Rare Books, Kennesaw State University.

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This image takes us forward to 1980, still at KJC. As opposed to the previous image, the Black Student Alliance is pictured in full here, with 14 members half of which are black women. The presence of black students and staff are much more noticeable in the 1980 yearbook as opposed to all of the previous yearbooks. There are black students in group pictures, solo shots, in classrooms, on sports teams, and in group photos with mixed races. While segregation had been legally over for a while by 1980, the social and societal impact of segregation especially in the south meant that interracial-mingling was still a taboo. Perhaps that’s why the 1980 yearbook shows black students much more than any of the yearbooks from the 70s, the 1970s saw many social changes and many of which were championed by young people in colleges which took a while to get all the way to small southern state schools.

Montage 1980, Student Publications. Montage and Talisman, 1967-1995; KSU/51/02; Department of Museums, Archives, and Rare Books, Kennesaw State University.