Celebrating Black Brides: Profile #12

Couple: Bernice DeCosta and Dr. Albert Miles Davis

Date of Wedding:  September 5, 1948 at 6:30 pm

Place: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church (Charleston, SC)

Officiant: Reverend Turner W. Morris

Fun facts: 

The bride was a 1941 graduate of Avery Institute in Charleston and a 1945 graduate of Simmons College in Boston.  She also studied at Traphagen School of Fashion in 1946.

The groom graduated from Morehouse College and Howard University Medical School.  

The couple met in Atlanta while the bride taught art and fashion design at Spelman College.

The church was decorated with white gladiolas and palms for the wedding.

The bride’s dress was made entirely of Chantilly lace ornamented with irredescent sequins.  She had a Cathedral train and full-length veil.

The bride’s only jewelry was the strand of pearls that her mother wore on her own wedding day.

The bride was the great-granddaughter of William and Ellen Craft, the enslaved couple from Macon, Georgia, who escaped to the North in 1848.  Ellen Craft dressed as a man and pretended to be the white male owner of William during their successful runaway voyage.

The couple divorced in 1954.