Wade in the Water

The remarkable story of Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a forgotten founder of rock and roll.

Crowning Miss Parkridge: Black Leisure in Southern California

The Parkridge Country Club demonstrated the fragile promise of African American recreational space in 1920s Los Angeles

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With integration a legal right, swimming pools became a new battleground in the segregation fight.

The Children of the Mississippi Freedom Summer

Black children played a central role in the Civil Rights Movement

Walter Morris and the “Triple Nickles” Jump into History

Despite systemic racism, Black soldiers forced their way into parachute training and took one major step toward integration.

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Historic Photos, Fresh Stories

A photograph of Mahalia Jackson in 1964 offers a window on the role of music in the civil rights movement.

Slavery ended in 1865. But many Black Southerners remained unfree laborers under the convict leasing system.

Hoping to court Black voters in the 1948 Presidential election, President Harry Truman issued Executive Order 9981, an act that significantly changed the armed forces and the Black experience in America.

For one day in June 1963 Detroit was the center of the civil rights movement.

The famed choreographer used his art to emphasize the universal resonance of African American stories.

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About Picturing Black History

Our Mission

The editorial team at Picturing Black History recognizes the importance of Black history as a subject of academic knowledge and a source of African diaspora identities. We embrace the power of images to capture stories of oppression and resistance, perseverance and resilience, freedom dreams, imagination, and joy within the United States and around the globe.

Picturing Black History emerged in the wake of national and international Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers in 2020. We recognize that Black Lives Matter is a contemporary outgrowth of a long history of Black racial protest in the United States. Picturing Black History is our collaborative effort to contribute to an ongoing public dialogue on the significance of Black history and Black life in the United States and throughout the globe.