Early Archive of African American Men Mug Shots from the 1940s and 1960s

African American Incarceration Policing

Archive

[African American] [Mug Shots] [Prison] Photo archive of 4 African American Men mug shots. Three date from the 1940s, all from the Cleveland, Ohio Police Department, and one from the 1960s from the Detroit Police Department. 4 Silver gelatin photographs. All 3 from Cleveland measure 2.75" x 4.5." The one from Detroit measures 4" x 3.25." All have front shots and profile shots, making a total of 8 images. All images are in black and white. The photo from Detroit, dated 7-30-69 has a name and address written on the verso: "Melvin Reynolds, 3450 Belvedere, Mothers Home." One photo from Cleveland features a man in his late 30s, with a shaved head and wearing a sportcoat that is dated 3-22-1948. Another features an African American man in his late 20s wearing a sportscoat and button down shirt from Cleveland dated 10-3-1947. Another photo from Cleveland features an African American man in his early 30s, dated 8-31-1945. All photos offer a glimpse into the booking process and document a time rarely seen. Beginning in the 1960s, a “law and order” rhetoric with racial undertones emerged in politics, which ultimately ushered in the era of mass incarceration and flipped the racial composition of prison in the United States from majority white at midcentury to majority black by the 1990s. In the 1960s and 1970s, as riots broke out in a number of urban centers and a wave of violent crime rolled across the United States, politicians on both sides of the aisle not only continued to link race and crime in rhetoric, they took action, enacting harsh, punitive, and retributively oriented policies as a solution to rising crime rates. Archive is in very good condition.

Item #20072

Price: $225.00