African American Women's History Resources at Rubenstein Library: Photography and Visual Culture

Collection contains trade cards, leaflets, catalogues, and broadsides grouped by products such as agriculture, food, sewing, books, furniture, machinery, and railroads. Stereotypical images of black women as domestics, earth mothers, and laborers can be found throughout.

Chiefly single portraits of African-American adults, with a few images of children. Images document African-American life, particularly dress and hairstyles for various time periods in American history. Includes images of women, WWI soldiers, sports groups, and school pictures.

This collection consists of approximately 50 posters, the bulk of which consist of corporate promotions depicting notable African Americans or significant moments in African American history. Posters include biographical sketches of African American writers, scientists, professional athletes, soldiers, civil rights workers and celebrity entertainers and notable African American women.

Mostly advertisements for minstrel shows, plays, and musicals. With few exceptions, black actors and actresses comprise show casts.

This collection is comprised of 18 black-and-white photographs taken in the 1960s, assembled by a private collector and organized into two distinct groups: nine journalistic photographs documenting civil rights movement events, some credited to Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) photographers Cliff Vaughs, Danny Lyon, and Rufus Hinton, with others unattributed; and nine prints of an unidentified multi-racial dramatic performance, circa mid-1960s, found in the archives of the Wayside Theatre in Middletown, Virginia. The Civil Rights prints typically include detailed press captions on the backs, and include images of injured and jailed demonstrators, police, bombed-out churches, and portraits of activists Fannie Lou Hamer and Atlanta's Markham Street rent protest leader Willie Williams.

Broadside opposing the New Deal and urging black women to vote for the presidential candidate Alf Landon and against the incumbent Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Democratic Party in the 1936 election.

African American family from the Ohio River Valley. Early 20th century photographs of African American family from the Ohio River valley. Primarily featured are the women in the family in a range of settings, from informal poses around the house to formal, and sometime, elaborate studio portraits. Individuals in photos are largely unidentified, but formal portraits bear the mark of studios in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

The collection includes photograph albums, loose photographs, and writings documenting the history of the African American Davis family in Hampton, Virginia from the 1930s to the 1950s as well as family members at later points; it also includes materials related to family history and genealogy that span the period from 1876 to the 1920s.

Chiefly black and white photographs done by Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill students for class projects. Photographs focus on the social life and customs of communities mainly in North Carolina, and contain numerous projects on aspects of black community life.

The scrapbook is devoted to Gaynor's groundbreaking appointment in 1971, with news clippings that document the appointment, and photographs of Gaynor being interviewed by reporters and accepting awards. There are congratulatory letters, notes, cards, and telegrams. Two notable women who wrote include Ruth Russell Gray, a founding member of the first all-female law firm in New Jersey, and Edna A. Merson, a founding member of the Committee of Civil Rights in Metropolitan New York, Inc.

Negatives, films, and videotapes by documentary photographer include several images of Charlotte Hawkins Brown and the Palmer Memorial Institute (ca. 1940s), a private junior and senior high school for blacks in Sedalia, North Carolina; and films taken in Liberia (ca. 1950s) documenting the country's people, industry, leaders, and rural life.

Photographs of Michael Francis Blake (d. 1934) a black photographer in Charleston, South Carolina who operated his studio for at least 22 years. He was Charleston's first, and for many years only, black photographer. The subject of his photographs are black women, men and children. Notable is a photo of a woman dressed in man's clothing, and a group photo of ten young nurses, probably students at the Hospital Training School for Nurses at Charleston, a black institution.

The Picture File is a large and diverse collection of visual materials ranging from the 17th through the 20th centuries. The bulk of the images in the collection date from the early 1800s through the 1950s. Formats represented include black and white photographic prints; cartes de visite, cabinet cards and other albumen prints; tintypes and daguerreotypes; engravings and lithographs; political cartoons; watercolors; sketches; postcards; stereographs; souvenir albums; leaflets; and small broadsides. Contains:

Currier & Ives Collection, ca. 1860-1900 -The collection contains framable prints that cover a range of "scenes of American life." A series from the late 1800s are depictions of black social life, intended to be humorous, that reflect gross stereotypes about black life.

Negro Series (box 29)

Through woodcuts and poetry, this collection shows the African American struggle for civil rights from 1954 to 1965.

The Asa and Elna Spaulding Papers, 1909-1997 and undated, bulk 1935-1983, document an African American family's lifelong involvement in the business, political, educational, religious, and social life of Durham, N.C. The Spauldings were active in a broad range of political bodies, businesses, civic groups, and activist organizations, including among many others theDurham County Board of Commissioners and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and were among the co-founders of Women-in-Action for the Prevention of Violence and Its Causes, Inc.