[Civil Rights][MLK Jr.][Vietnam War][Anti-War] King, Martin Luther, Jr. Speeches by The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. About the War in Vietnam (1968) marks a decisive and controversial moment in the Civil Rights Movement when the famed preacher and activist voiced a strong opposition to American military intervention in Vietnam.....
[African American][Interracial] Interracial couple tintype photograph, circa 1870s–1880s, an intimate image of interracial partnership in the decades following the Civil War, when anti miscegenation statutes and racial violence sharply constrained such relationships in much of the United States. Created during the Reconstruction or immediate post Reconstruction era, the image presents.....
African American servicemen and civilians photographed during the final years of World War II document social life among Black military families and communities during a period of wartime mobilization and gradual social change in the United States. Twelve photographs dating primarily to 1944 and 1945 depict African American soldiers, sailors.....
Prince Hall Freemasonry ceremonial and civic life in New York appears throughout this archive documenting African American fraternal leadership during the later decades of the twentieth century. Prince Hall Masonic lodges formed one of the most influential institutional networks within Black communities in the United States, combining ritual practice with.....
African American nightlife photographs documenting formal social life near West Walnut Street in Louisville, Kentucky, circa 1940s to early 1950s, with direct evidence of how Black leisure, commercial entertainment, and urban community life functioned within a segregated downtown district. Stamped by Wilson Foto at 818 Walnut Street, the group places.....
Photographic archive of fifty-six vernacular images dating circa 1940–1945 documents African American family life during World War II, including military service, higher education, interstate travel, and middle-class domestic stability. Taken by and of members of a single family, the photographs situate Black civilian and military experience within the broader wartime.....
IBPOEW travel photographs of Cleveland, Ohio African American Elks members and women auxiliaries en route to Denver and Detroit, circa 1910s, documenting Black fraternal community and the public demonstrations of lodge life well before the Civil Rights Act. The Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World was.....
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.....
I’m Black and I’m Drunk by Chaney Allen, published in 1976, presents an autobiographical account of alcoholism written by an African American woman reflecting on addiction, family life, and recovery during the social transformations of the 1970s. Allen recounts her experience as the daughter of a Baptist minister while describing.....
[War on Drugs] [Policing & Community Organization] Massachusetts drug enforcement and anti-crack protest press photo archive documenting narcotics policing, evidence display, neighborhood mobilization, and women’s rehabilitation in Boston, Springfield, Pittsfield, and Framingham from 1968 through the late 1980s, preserving direct evidence of how the drug crisis was made visible through.....
Tuscan Morning Star Lodge No. 48 annual banquet photograph documenting African American fraternal life and community leadership in Philadelphia during the late 1940s. The image records members and guests of a lodge affiliated with Prince Hall Freemasonry, a network of lodges founded in the eighteenth century to provide African American.....
Early photographs of African Americans produced during the decades following emancipation provide important visual documentation of Black life during the Reconstruction and early Jim Crow eras. Portrait photographs and vernacular images from the late nineteenth century capture African Americans navigating newly won freedoms while confronting the economic and social constraints.....
Sills family photograph album, circa 1910s to 1990s, documents multigenerational African American life in Woodbridge, Connecticut, with sustained evidence of military service, family continuity, and community formation across the twentieth century. The earliest image, a World War I era postcard portrait of William Sills in uniform, establishes a lineage of.....
African American family photograph album, 1930s, Mt. Hope, Missouri, documents the daily life, social relationships, and labor conditions of a Black family during the Great Depression and provides direct evidence of both domestic life and employment structures in a rural Midwestern setting. Centered on the Berry family, including Helen Berry.....
[Photography] [African American] Black photographer Charles “Teenie” Harris captures a vernacular photograph at a lunch counter within Pittsburgh’s Hill District—an epicenter of Black cultural and civic life in the mid-20th century. Circa 1949. Black and white silver gelatin print measuring 10" x 8". This warm and candid image shows a......
Photographs and printed ephemera documenting Prince Hall–affiliated fraternal organizations in the 1950s establish a record of African American civic, ritual, and social life during segregation, when Black institutions operated as central structures for leadership, mutual aid, and public identity. The archive identifies members of the Prince Hall Shriners and the.....
Vernacular photograph album of an African American family in New York, circa 1940s–1970s, documents middle-class Black life in Harlem and upstate communities during a period shaped by wartime labor expansion, migration, and the early Civil Rights era. The images place the family within a broader historical context of African American.....
Photographs of an Omega Psi Phi fraternity Mardi Gras dance in Washington, D.C. during the 1960s document African American social and fraternal life in a period when Black institutions organized formal cultural spaces in response to segregation and exclusion from mainstream venues. Founded in 1911 at Howard University, Omega Psi.....
[African American] [Photography] [New York City] Thompson, Juanita. Photograph archive, 1939 to 1966 documents African American middle class life in Jamaica, Queens and records domestic, recreational, and formal social environments within Black communities in mid twentieth century New York. The archive establishes a sustained visual record of family networks, leisure.....
African American supper club photograph archive documents Black social life, leisure culture, and community formation in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia during the 1940s and 1950s, when segregation and racial exclusion shaped access to public space across the United States. Created during and after World War II and into the Korean War.....
[African American] Southern African American life photographic archive, ca. 1930s–1941, documents everyday life and community environments of Black residents across several states of the American South during the Jim Crow era. The photographs depict rural and urban scenes from Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana, presenting visual evidence of.....
Vernacular family photograph album from Trinidad and Tobago, circa 1930s–1940s, documents Black middle-class life in the late colonial Caribbean through domestic portraiture, institutional affiliation, and social ritual prior to national independence in 1962. The album centers a single extended family and records weddings, childhood, education, and professional identity, situating its.....
[African American Community Life] African American social photographs documenting dance, nightlife, and community gathering in barrooms, banquet interiors, and domestic social spaces, circa 1950s to early 1960s, with direct visual evidence of Black leisure, dress, and public sociability across the transition from late Jim Crow to the early civil rights.....
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.....
Postwar African American military family photo album documenting the institutional pathways through which a black Los Angeles family pursued stability and advancement in the 1950s-60s. Images primarily center on a young black female graduate seen throughout the album, emphasizing academic success within an era where segregation and de-emphasis of female.....
