kat donegan 🇵🇸✊
#art #history: happy decca day to all my favourite muckrakers - & remember: it's not about your accident of birth. it's what you do with your privilege. jessica mitford (born 11 september, 1917) broke the mould.
if you want to know more about one of my fave ever lefties, i'll expound a bit below.
#jessicaMitford #deccaMitford #illustration #communism #literature #author #muckraker #activist
Sep 11, 2025 at 11:43pmWeb
Show threadkat donegan 🇵🇸✊Sep 11, 2025
#art/#history: that old quandary - nature or nurture - has been rankling & flummoxing the human race for as long as we existed...or from the second generation, at least. if you think you've fixed your ideas on the subject, you may not be familiar with the mitford sisters. as the fifth-born of six sisters, she was surrounded by that particular brand of english eccentricity. it's no surprise that jessica (or, as her sisters anointed her, decca) was left largely to her own devices.
#deccaMitford
Show threadkat donegan 🇵🇸✊Sep 11, 2025
the room she shared with her older sister, unity (who would later have an intimate relationship with adolf hitler), was designated in a typically adolescent way. your sister may have had bon jovi posters on her walls whereas you had bauhaus. decca had the communist hammer & sickle to mark her territory. unity drew swastikas (bon jovi, clearly the fascists in this scenario).
#mitfordSisters #jessicaMitford #art #journalism
Show threadkat donegan 🇵🇸✊Sep 11, 2025
another mitford sis, diana, married oswald mosley. the other three were a duchess, an author (nancy of 'love in a cold climate' fame) & pamela just cavorted. at the age of 19, decca bought a camera with her father's credit & ran away to fight in the spanish civil war.
#spanishCivilWar #literature #muckraking #illustration #deccaMitford
Show threadkat donegan 🇵🇸✊Sep 11, 2025
she became a communist; moved to the states; married a civil rights lawyer & got involved with the struggle for equality; wrote 'hons & rebels'; got into investigative journalism & didn't die until she'd recorded a cover of the beatles' 'maxwell's silver hammer'. decca's daughter, dinky, decided she'd be more like her mum than her aunties & married james forman, who was a member of both the black panthers & the league of revolutionary black workers.
#deccaMitford #jamesForman #blackPanthers
Show threadkat donegan 🇵🇸✊Sep 11, 2025

i'm dedicating my portrait to decca's pet lamb, miranda, about whom her mistress said: 'she was the light of my life'.

bonus decca trivia: she contemplated assassinating hitler because her sister, unity, would have afforded her easy access.
#antifascist #deccaMitford #mitfordSisters #art #illustration #muckraking #author #literature

Show threadSarah WSep 12, 2025
@kathimmel
Must have made some interesting family gatherings.
Decca was great, thanks for reminding me about her.
Show threadkat donegan 🇵🇸✊Sep 12, 2025
@Sarahw not sure how they managed, really. i'd be off! :)