[Annotated Vernacular Photograph Album and Memory Book Assembled by Reber Woods, Memorializing Her Senior Year at Vashon High School]

[St. Louis, 1934. Good.. [34] leaves, illustrated with fifty-one mounted photographs (most inscribed), with 4 loose photographs laid in, plus numerous pages containing manuscript messages by fellow students, various ephemeral items pasted in throughout, and with some ephemera laid in. Original pre-printed Girl Graduate's Journal published by Reilly & Lee of Chicago, bound in light blue cloth with decorative stamping in gilt and white on front cover, string tied. Noticeable wear and soiling to covers. Some leaves detached, some lightly chipped. With additional autograph book laid in, numbering fifty-five pages, dated 1929-1930. Original blue cloth, spine tied with bow. Half of front cover chipped away, heavy crease to rear cover. Minor dust-soiling and toning to text. A wonderful senior-year memory book compiled by Lillian Reber "Snookie" Woods (1915-1982), a young African-American woman graduating from St. Louis's segregated Vashon High School in June 1934. Vashon High School was the second high school built for Black students in St. Louis when it opened in 1927. Woods has filled out a few preliminary pages with information on her school, its colors, the school "yell," her personal motto ("To Thine Ownself Be True" and "Excelsior!"), and the names of the class officers, among other information. Thereafter, the contents comprise over fifty original photographs, friendly inscriptions from classmates and teachers, and various ephemeral items. Almost all of the photographs are small-format portraits of Woods' classmates, almost all of which have been inscribed by each subject, providing critical identifications for other students attending and/or graduating from Vashon in 1934. The inscriptions to Woods are typical of student memory and yearbooks, with teachers and students wishing Woods a happy future, praising her as a student, offering life advice, and so forth. The ephemeral items (both pasted in and laid in) flesh out Woods' school and graduation experience, and include a four-page manuscript "Last Will and Testament" from the senior class, the printed program for the June graduation ceremony, a ticket to a senior-year boat excursion for all St. Louis-area graduates, five of Woods' high school report cards, and a few clippings.

An additional autograph book is laid in containing over fifty pages of inscription to Woods from her classmates in 1929-1930. The inscriptions seem to emanate from Woods' final year of her middle school years at the Sampson School. Also laid in are two alumni lists (one listing January 1934 graduates and the other June 1934 graduates) dated in 1971, with addresses for many of the alumni and with some students listed as "deceased." Woods also revisited her graduation program in the present album and noted deceased students on the program. High school memory books for Black women in the Jim Crow years are incredibly rare. Out of the few we've handled, the present example is the most charming, with a wealth of sincere messages contained within the inscriptions and a wealth of information to be gleaned from the inscribed photographic portraits of her fellow students.