African American women's military photograph archive, 1945, documenting the admittance of African American women into military service through the Women's Army Corps with racially segregated assignments to units and institutions, reflecting both the expansion of wartime opportunities and the persistence of official segregation in the United States. Notably, three images.....

[African American][Voting Rights] New Constitution for the State of Illinois. 1870 printing of the Illinois Constitution ratified after the Civil War documents Reconstruction-era legal reform in a Midwestern state that had previously enforced restrictive Black Codes despite its status as a free state. By the outbreak of the Civil War.....

African American nightlife and community social life during the Jim Crow era documented in a group of silver gelatin prints centered on a crowded barroom and dance hall, likely late 1940s to early 1950s. The group preserves Black urban leisure within the commercial social spaces that took shape in Bronzeville.....

Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Folk Then and Now published in 1939 presents a historical and sociological study of African and African Diaspora history written by one of the leading intellectual figures of the twentieth century Civil Rights movement. Du Bois, historian, sociologist, and co founder of the National.....

Brewer, John Mason. Negro Legislators of Texas and Their Descendants documents African American political leadership during Reconstruction and preserves biographical accounts of Black legislators who held office in Texas following the Civil War. Published in 1935, the work situates these individuals within the broader transformation of Southern governance during Reconstruction.....

African American stereoview archive documenting Black labor in cotton, rice, turpentine, phosphate, fruit, and plantation agriculture across the post Reconstruction South and Caribbean, 1890s-1900s, showcasing how emancipation gave way to a new labor order structured by low wages, racial control, export agriculture, and restricted economic mobility. Images show how Black.....

Fowler, Charles. Historical Romance of the American Negro (1902) presents an early twentieth century literary interpretation of African American life in the decades following the Civil War through the fictional narrative of Beulah Jackson and her family. The novel combines storytelling with historical commentary to challenge prevailing white dominated interpretations.....

Ball, James Presley. Carte de visite portraits, circa 1854–1870, document the studio practice of one of the most prominent African American photographers of the nineteenth century and situate portrait photography within both commercial and abolitionist contexts in mid-century Cincinnati. Ball, an established daguerreotypist and later photographic entrepreneur, operated multiple studios.....

Tintype portrait of African American woman, circa late 1860s, documents Black female self-presentation during the Reconstruction era following the abolition of slavery in 1865. The image places the sitter within the early years of legal freedom for formerly enslaved people, when photography became an accessible medium for recording identity, status.....

Supreme Court materials from Shelley v. Kraemer and Bowsher v. Synar, 1948 and 1986, tracing two distinct constitutional problems of governmental power across four decades of American law and policy. In Shelley, the Court barred state courts from enforcing racially restrictive private covenants, establishing judicial enforcement of racial exclusion as.....

Clearwater, Florida's civic identity development photograph archive, circa 1951 to 1955, documenting the elections, patriotic ceremonies, voluntary associations, and municipal rituals through which residents of a rapidly expanding Florida city defined community identity during the early Cold War. Clearwater's population more than doubled between 1950 and 1960, and these photographs.....

Glass lantern slide photograph group of incarcerated men, late nineteenth century, documents prison yard life within a racially stratified carceral system in the United States following Reconstruction. The images show predominantly African American prisoners alongside some white inmates in striped uniforms, situating the material within a period when Black men.....

Palmer, J.A., and Havens, O.P. stereoview photographs, circa 1870s–1880s, depicting African American labor in the Reconstruction-era South with direct relevance to the study of post-emancipation work systems, racialized labor roles, and visual culture in the decades following the Civil War. The images present two distinct but related scenes: one showing.....