When I visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture a few years ago, I saw on a wall a short list of black photographers from years past. These were not the names…
Tag: African Americans
Earliest black census workers
Posted in Black history, history, and Work
The history of black folks in America can be so elusive. Every now and then, I come across an item at auction that seems to have no connection to black history and with a little…
Promise of fair treatment made & broken at 1939 NY World’s Fair
Posted in Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and history
The newspaper pages were tucked behind a seemingly unrelated art print of a stone church. I was a bit interested in the artwork but was more intrigued by the newspaper. I assumed that it contained an…
Picture Stories: Stepping out in style
Posted in Photos
The wonderful photos kept coming. For several weeks, black and white photos with a mix of people, events and celebrations turned up on the auction table. An auction-house staffer told me that a dealer brought them…
1930s communist pamphlet on blacks in a ‘Soviet America’
Posted in Books, and Ephemera/Paper/Documents
The small pamphlet with the black and white cover bore the title “The Negroes in a Soviet America.” On the cover was a young African American man, smiling broadly and happily as he undoubtedly envisioned…
Friday at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources to help them determine the value of their items. I’m not able to appraise their treasures, but I can do…
Woman tries to reclaim her home in 1930s Jim Crow South
Posted in Black history, and Ephemera/Paper/Documents
“I am a poor Colored Woman trying to have a home for living in my old age My husband and I have put all our life earnings in this place and now it is taken…
When I moved to Philadelphia some years ago, a colleague at the newspaper told me that African Americans had sat for artist Andrew Wyeth, and that he’d given them some of his paintings. I was…
Seeking signs of black westerners in a Wild West auction
Posted in Black history, Ephemera/Paper/Documents, and Photos
I went looking for the tintypes and Cabinet cards of photos of African Americans. I knew that we helped to settle the West – even though I never learned that in history class – so…