Stories

Untold stories and rarely seen images of the Black experience

The Black Rugrats

The Gold Dust Twins advertising campaign used caricatured Black children to sell cleaning products, which reinforced racist stereotypes and white nostalgic myths of Black servitude in the 20th-century United States.

Desegregating the Schoolhouse Doors

Vivian Malone and James Hood calmly faced reporters as they prepared to integrate the University of Alabama in 1963, symbolizing the determination of Black youth in the face of those who were staunchly opposed to desegregation.

Henry Ossian Flipper

Once enslaved and later the first Black American to graduate from West Point, Henry Ossian Flipper is America’s overlooked, trailblazing antihero.

Jazz band performing with Ahmad Jamal on piano, Jon Morris on trombone, Harold 'Brushes' Lee on drums, Horace Turner on trumpet, John Foster on saxophone, and Sam Hurt (cut off on right) on trombone, in stage in front of sparkled curtain, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1945.

Pittsburgh’s Jazz Hotspots

Pittsburgh’s segregated Hill District became a hub of jazz and Black culture. Charles “Teenie” Harris, the renowned photographer and chronicler of Black life, captured it all.