Family and Community Archives - Picturing Black History

A photograph of three African American women who were identified as domestic helpers waiting for a street car, all three women are wearing coats and hats, two men and a woman who are white are also waiting on transportation, Atlanta, Georgia. 1939. From the New York Public Library.

Black Women’s Work and Leisure in the Black Mecca

The everyday lives and struggles of Black women in Atlanta reveal the roots of their activism.

Aerial shot of some of the more than 100,000 people demonstrating in protest of racial discrimination, jam Woodward Avenue, from curb to curb in a huge, but orderly "Walk to Freedom." Most of the marchers entered and surrounded Cobo Hall and Arena to hear Martin Luther King Junior speak.

Dreaming in Detroit

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

July 1972: A group of youths spraypaint graffiti on a New York wall.

The Graffiti Art Movement in Philadelphia

“Coming to a Wall Near You!” From the 1960s to 1980s, Black teenagers in Philadelphia convinced the world that graffiti wasn’t vandalism, but public art rooted in protest and self-expression.

Five of the 21 American soldiers who refused to return to America at the end of the Korean War. The sign on the truck reads: "We Stay for Peace." They moved to China; by the 1960s, all but two had returned home.

Black Soldiers After the Korean War

Some Black soldiers chose not to go home after the war, remaining in North Korea and China—behind the “bamboo curtain”—to escape racism in the United States.

Eduardo Kobra's 'Muddy Waters Tribute' mural, part of the Wabash Arts Corridor is displayed downtown in Chicago, Illinois on April 13, 2019.

Muddy Waters: Ain’t that a Man

Bluesman Muddy Waters went from the Mississippi cotton fields to Chicago and changed the face of American music.

W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), American educator and writer.

The Souls of Black Folk

The life and work of W. E. B. Du Bois, writer, educator, and chronicler of Black life in America.

African-American children in a segregated swimming pool at Druid Hill Park, Baltimore, Maryland, 1955.

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

The Nineteenth-Century Roots of Black Feminism

Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, the National Association of Colored Women, and the foundations of Black women’s struggles today.

MORNING MUSTERING OF THE 'CONTRABAND' AT FORTRESS MONROE, ON THEIR WAY TO THEIR DAY'S WORK, UNDER THE PAY AND DIRECTION OF THE U.S

Journey to Freedom

Enslaved refugees sought freedom in Union contraband camps during the American Civil War.

American gospel singer Sister Rosetta Tharpe standing onstage, singing at the microphone with her guitar, at Cafe Society Downtown, New York City, December 11, 1940

The Godmother of Rock and Roll

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

Photographs and stories that changed the world

Family and Community