PORTRAITURE
As a magazine editor, I always portrayed the faces and features of colored folk. One cannot realize today how rare it was in 1910. . . . In many great periodicals, it was the standing rule that no Negro portrait was to appear and that rule still holds in some American periodicals.
W. E. B. Du Bois
One important means of improving African American morale in the face of degrading stereotypes was the celebration of black humanity, beauty, individuality, and achievement exemplified in portraiture. With The Crisis, African American portrait photographs became a fixture in the Negro press, some also making their way into mainstream magazines and newspapers.
This section presents inspiring and dynamic portraits of black Americans—shot by famous photographers, both black and white and by local African American photo studios during the period of the modern civil rights movement. |
