They weren’t just about keeping cool in packed pews during the summer. They were a prop, languidly rocking during dull moments of the service or fluttering energetically—in unison with others, like a murmuration of starlings—as the minister or choir reached a crescendo.

That is how Alvin Ailey used them in his seminal modern dance piece Revelations (1960). In the section Move, Members, Move, the dancers’ fans theatrically mimic the gossip and chatter, the hallelujahs of the congregation—or as Ailey put it, “The holy rollers and all the church happiness.”

Fans were ubiquitous in southern churches until postwar air conditioning spread. Many white congregations gradually left them behind while black churches, often unable to afford retrofits, kept the tradition. Printed fans typically featured colorful religious, family, or landscape images on one side, with advertisements for funeral homes or life insurance companies on the reverse.

For black churches in the Jim Crow years, the fans circulated positive imagery at a time when mainstream publishing often did not. Pictures of loving, affectionate families were paired with advertisements for local black-owned funeral homes and life insurance companies. One antiques collector remembers: “The church hand fans I remember always had the faces of people who looked like me, even when my schoolbooks did not. Dick and Jane with their dog Spot may have been in my reader books, but on Sundays, little black girls and boys with smiling faces and loving moms and dads were in force.”

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Special thanks to David McGee for suggesting church fans.

Links:

• Church Fans - Tranae Chatman, Tennessee State Museum, August 15, 2023

  
  

• A time when hand fans cooled church-goers – My Auction Finds, July 23, 2014

  
  

• Revelations - Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.

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