The exhibition examines the way that African American portraits can reveal the machinations of elite Black and mixed-race 19th and early 20th century women. Through this exhibition, the curators aim to visualize critical fabulation and depict the particular way in which these women sought full citizenship through self-making practices in post-emancipation U.S. They existed as Black renditions of constructions of Womanhood that never considered them, and they were a small burgeoning nation of women.