abstract |
With the advent of Reconstruction, a new photographic language failed to illustrate the
self-determination and citizenship of African Americans entirely. While Black people embraced
education and literacy as markers of freedom, Black citizenship and equal rights remained
elusive. Images of the Black quest for education reveal their claims to political, economic, and
social freedoms on one hand while battling White supremacy's denial of access on the other.
In this study, I claim that images of Black education mirror the liminal moment when
Black self-determination, citizenship, and equal rights were evolving at the dawn of freedom.
Focusing solely on the antebellum slave states of Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia, which
represented the earliest anti-literacy laws, this study reveals the categories of school and literacy-
related photographs of Black people during Reconstruction, including images of Black students
and teachers. Though photography historians categorize photographs of Black education as
vernacular photography, an umbrella phrase used to distinguish fine art photographs from those
used for various purposes, including governmental, personal, scientific, et al., I argue that
photographs of Black education affirm Black achievement, and connect this sub-topic of visual
culture to the changing landscape of Black citizenship during Reconstruction and its aftermath.
African American photography of the Civil War and Reconstruction period informs our
understanding of scientific racism, portraits of enslaved people, plantation life, and Black
freedom after emancipation. My work interprets the meaning of these often anonymous faces of
Black education, and places them in conversation with portrait photographs of Black leaders,
politicians, activists and intellectuals such as Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and
Frederick Douglass; negative stereotypes about Black people that supported White supremacy;
the photographic portfolios produced by Frances Benjamin Johnston at Hampton and Tuskegee
Institutes; and W.E.B. Du Bois's album of American Negroes near the close of the nineteenth
century. My research reveals the added value of consulting other forms of contemporary visual
media, such as prints, ephemera, and paintings, to compensate for gaps in the photographic
historical record and to provide a broader context for our understanding of Black visual
representation.
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