African American Higher Education Professor Smith and Wiley College Students After World War II 1946

HBCU Wiley College African American Education

Photograph

Original photograph captioned “Prof Smith and his German Class,” 1946, records eighteen African American students studying German at Wiley College during the first summer after the end of World War II. Founded in Marshall, Texas, in 1873 by the Freedmen’s Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church to provide Black students access to higher education, Wiley developed under segregation as a liberal arts institution serving African American students in Texas and beyond. The photograph documents that academic work through a specific course, instructor, and student group rather than a ceremonial or athletic event, while the names written on the verso preserve the identities of fifteen members of the class.

Original silver gelatin photograph, 5 x 6¾ inches. Eighteen students stand with Professor Smith on an outdoor flight of steps. The printed caption at the lower center reads “Prof Smith and his German Class.” Inscriptions in black ink on the verso identify the group as “Summer Class of 1946” at “Wiley College,” followed by Professor Smith’s name and the names of fifteen students. One male student, positioned at left in the second-to-last row, wears a U.S. Army T-shirt, a visible connection to military service or military culture during the first postwar summer; the photograph alone does not establish whether he was a veteran.

The date places the class within a consequential year for Black higher education in Texas. In 1946, Wiley graduate Heman Marion Sweatt challenged his exclusion from the University of Texas School of Law, beginning the litigation that culminated in Sweatt v. Painter and challenged segregated graduate education in the state. Wiley itself had been educating Black students since Reconstruction and awarded its first Bachelor of Arts degree in 1888. Minor handling dents and light soiling to verso; very good condition. The contemporary captions and fifteen student identifications make this a particularly specific record of classroom life at an HBCU in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

Item #16253

Price: $220.00