Black Cloth: Mourning Dress and Drapery at the White House
This exhibit explores the power of black cloth as part of public and private displays of bereavement at the White House. Between 1841 and 1963, eight American presidents died while in office. By examining the fabrics used to decorate the White House for their funerals, as well as the mourning fashions of their spouses, one can track displays of grief through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and observe the mourning traditions that were either preserved or discarded to meet the needs of a growing, modernizing nation.
On September 19, 1881, President James A. Garfield died from wounds sustained in an assassination attack. Americans, reeling, turned to textiles to demonstrate and project the extent of their pain—draping bodies and buildings alike in black. The Washington, D.C. newspaper the Daily Critic reported: “Public and private buildings…all alike wear the sombre [sic] drapery, indicative of the nation’s grief. Dry goods stores were thrown open immediately after the sad news was received, and tens of thousands of yards of mourning goods were disposed of…Clerks, porters and others were busy, and wagons loaded with black crape and cambric were very soon on the way delivering orders.”
This exhibit explores the power of black cloth as part of public and private displays of bereavement at the White House. It examines the practice of draping the White House with black fabric as a symbol of the people’s unified grief, and the highly ritualized social codes of mourning dress that first ladies, as public figures, navigated while contending with their own personal sorrows. Eight American presidents have died while in office: William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley, Warren G. Harding, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. Through the fabrics used to decorate their funerals and the mourning fashions of their spouses, one can track displays of grief through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and observe the mourning traditions that were either preserved or discarded to meet the needs of a growing, modernizing nation.
For an overview of the observances expected of the bereaved, please look at this chart and glossary which describe the typical mourning periods and the accompanying mourning fabrics appropriate to each period. This chart is not exhaustive, as mourning customs differed across geography and time, as well as between etiquette experts, but it reveals how mourning was generally conducted during the nineteenth century, when the rituals around mourning were most strictly observed. Although the chart mostly takes from British sources, Americans followed the English fashions for mourning. Mrs. John Sherwood, in her 1884 handbook Manners and Social Usages, wrote that her readers should emulate "the English, from whom we borrow our fashion in funeral matters."
The information above is primarily sourced from Lou Taylor, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1983).
The information above is primarily sourced from Lou Taylor, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History (London: G. Allen and Unwin, 1983).
Black Cloth: Mourning Dress and Drapery at the White House
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Mourning William Henry Harrison
William Henry Harrison died a month after taking office. Harrison was the first president to die in office, and his obsequies—his funeral and burial rites—set several precedents for the mourning decoration of future State Funerals.
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Mourning Zachary Taylor
Like William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor passed away at the White House. Only nine years after the first presidential death in office, Taylor’s funeral closely mirrored Harrison’s solemnities.
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Mourning Abraham Lincoln
John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln during a theater performance in Washington, D.C., just days after the surrender of Robert E. Lee. His death plunged the tired Union into mourning, which shrouded itself in black cloth to demonstrate its grief.
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Mourning James A. Garfield
James A. Garfield was shot by assassin Charles Guiteau at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. and died from his wounds over two months later. Only sixteen years after the murder of Abraham Lincoln, President Garfield‘s funeral services and mourning decorations took inspiration from his predecessor’s.
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Mourning William McKinley
William McKinley was shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz while attending the Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York. His death marked the first U.S. presidential assassination of the twentieth century, and his funeral reflected the simplification of mourning rituals that accompanied the new era.
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Mourning Warren G. Harding
Warren G. Harding died unexpectedly during a long cross-country tour known as his “Voyage of Understanding.” He collapsed shortly before reaching San Francisco and passed away soon after, likely of a fatal heart attack. His body returned to Washington on a black-draped train — mourners gathered along the tracks to catch a glimpse of the casket.
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Mourning Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia, shortly after being elected to an unprecedented fourth term. Although his death shocked the public, Roosevelt had known he was gravely ill, and made plans for a simpler State Funeral than those of his predecessors.
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Mourning John F. Kennedy
While riding in an open car in Dallas, Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald fatally shot President John F. Kennedy. Following the tradition of earlier twentieth-century presidential funerals, the mourning decorations were “subtle, yet distinct,” although the funeral processions were modeled on Abraham Lincoln’s grand obsequies, reflecting the intense grief of the nation.
This exhibit was curated by Rachel Bellis, the 2024 Digital Exhibits Intern and MA student in Costume Studies at New York University.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Leslie Calderone, Alexandra Lane, and Rebecca Kaliff of the White House Historical Association Digital Library Team—your help and kind encouragement made this exhibit possible. Thank you also to Nancy Deihl and Dr. Rachel Lifter at NYU. I so appreciate the assistance of McKinley Presidential Library & Museum’s Kimberly Kenney and Mark Holland; Lou Taylor, whose work was so central to my exhibit; and the many people I reached out to who were generous with their time and knowledge. Special thanks particularly to Lee Johnson, and all my friends and family, who have supported me through the research and writing process, gamely learning all about funerals as I bounced ideas off them. And, of course, a big thank you to all who read this exhibit to learn more about mourning and the White House!
