Dress to tell: MCC student wears heirloom caftan

Lolita O’Neal pauses for a photograph wearing her civil rights activist grandmother’s dress. O’Neal is a student in the College’s Medical Office Management Program. Before February’s Black History Month ended, Meridian Community College student Lolita O'Neal wanted to pay a unique tribute to her grandmother, civil rights leader Victoria Jackson Gray Adams. 

So, O’Neal wore her grandma's special made dress to class, honoring her as a personal tribute to Adams. 

"This means a lot to me to wear it during February. I chose to wear it at the end of the month, so it’s really special and because she did so much for African Americans,” O'Neal said. 

Adams was a crucial figure in the struggle of Mississippi blacks to win their political and civil rights in the 1960s and the first woman to seek a seat in the U.S. Senate from her state. A native of Hattiesburg, Adams began teaching voter registration classes in the early 1960s and was among activists Fannie Lou Hamer and Annie Devin selected as national spokespersons for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and attended the Democratic Convention in 1964. A recipient of numerous awards and honors for her activism, Adams was featured in the Eyes on the Prize documentary and was active in human rights organizations. She died in 2006 at the age of 79. 

A world traveler, Adams often visited Africa and became friends with a king and queen in one region, her granddaughter said. "And whenever they knew she would come, they would make her these caftans – like the one I'm wearing – to give to her," O’Neal added. 

Created with vividly colored purple and gold silk and brocade and edged with seed pearls, the dress is at least 40 years old, and it’s only on a few occasions that O'Neal has worn it. Though the caftan had a matching hat, O'Neal repurposed the hat into a headband, keeping its regal look. When she wore the ensemble to her Medical Office Management Program classes, students and the instructors were awed by the dress and its backstory. 

"I’ve kept the dress because my grandmother was so special to me,” she said.  

O'Neal, who moved from her native Ohio to care for her mom who was living in Mississippi, enrolled in MCC to prepare for a medical career. "I was a certified nurse assistant and a unit secretary and got into the medical field," she said of her decision to pursue her degree.