[Vernacular Photograph Album Featuring Multiple Generations of an Active African American Family]

[Most likely the Western United States, 1959. Very good.. [39] leaves, illustrated with 155 mounted photographs, almost all black-and-white, but a handful in color, ranging from thumbnails to 5.75 x 3.5 inches. Oblong folio. Contemporary black cloth, gilt title on front cover, string tied. Edges and joints somewhat frayed. Some leaves detached, some abrasions to album leaves from removed photos. Images in generally nice condition. An interesting collection of images memorializing an unidentified African American family, including their family gatherings, travel, horsing around, driving or riding in cars, attending a christening, and more. Most of the images capture men, women, and children in their Sunday best, often in very flat, rural settings. As such, it is likely that the family lived and predominantly traveled in the Middle West (Kansas or Nebraska) or some point south or westward (Oklahoma, Texas, or New Mexico). A single image carries an identifiable processing location, from a Fox Company developing location in San Antonio. This image carries an annotation on the verso from a woman named Louise, inscribing it to her mother in an unknown location, and describing her house and a recent "eleven inch snow" which is rare in south-central Texas.

At one point, several of the subjects here visited Mexico, evidenced by two photographs of several people wearing sombreros (one labeled "Tijuana") and riding a donkey. One of the very few captioned photographs pictures a group of African American children in a horse-drawn carriage, and reads, "Where is the horse?" Another image of a newborn baby carries the imprint of Gates Studio, and another is inscribed to "Virginia" from "Frederick St. Clair," which may be clues to the origins of the family. The proposed date range, 1942 to 1959, comes from the earliest and latest dated photographs present here, thereby documenting the African American experience in the latter Jim Crow years, and well into the diaspora brought about by the Great Migration.