Skip to main content

African Americans

 Subject
Subject Source: Library of Congress Subject Headings

Found in 22 Collections and/or Records:

Abraham Family photographs

 Collection
Identifier: SC 01862
Content Description A collection of 27 8x10 silver gelatin prints that includes photographs of Dana Abraham's family. Each photograph is black and white with white borders, and spans from Fall 2022 to Spring 2023. Most of the photographs are of young women and girls of the Abraham family, with some elderly members of the family also included. The photographs are representative of the Abraham family's bond. Statement from creator and donor Dana Abraham: "The bond my family shares is something truly...
Dates: 2022-2023

African American Cabinet Cards

 Collection — Box 1
Identifier: MS 00066
Scope and Contents 53 cabinet cards depicting African Americans from the 1880s-1890s. Photography studios' information is printed on the cards, but personal information concerning those photographed is not included. One cabinet card was taken by a C. E. Cheyne photography in Hampton, Virginia. The back of the cabinet card reads Carrie E. Stules, January 14, 1896. Three cabinet cards are of the medicine show duo "Pete and Lize," photographed by E. R. Rose, Oswego, Kansas. Geo Hamtpon...
Dates: circa 1880s-1890s

John Newton Bell Papers

 Collection
Identifier: MS 00345
Content Description

The John Newton Bell papers includes personal and professional correspondence from relatives, business associates and religious figures throughout Virginia and the greater Appalachia. Letters document subject areas including the Civil War, the hospitalization of women in mental health facilities, agricultural issues, and religious matters related to the Presbyterian Church.

Dates: 1841-1882

Vito L. Bianco collection of African American photographs

 Collection
Identifier: MS 00325
Content Description

This collection contains one bound album of 18 photographs of African Americans, including children, women, as well as men in military uniforms. Photographs were taken by multiple studios in Virginia including the E.C. Leath Photograph Gallery in Petersburg and the Virginia, Evans and Son Gallery in Norfolk, virginia. Other photographs were produced by New York based studios including Adams Studio and Richard Ward Studio. The photographs include carte de visites, tintypes and postcards.

Dates: circa 1875

Leonard Born Papers

 Collection
Identifier: UA 5.048
Scope and Contents The collection includes papers written by Born during the course of his attendance at William & Mary, mainly for English classes. There is also correspondence from 1985 and loose pages from a photo album believed to have been assembled by Born, while a student at William & Mary. The contents are primarily photographs of campus and Williamsburg area from the 1926-1927. Additional photographs relate to life in rural, early twentieth century Virginia, the Newport News Shipyard,...
Dates: 1924-1927, 1985

Meta J. Chapman Diaries

 Collection
Identifier: MS 00163
Scope and Contents Contains three handwritten diaries that once belonged to Meta J. Chapman of Pennsylvania. The first diary is for the year 1929, and contains information about the weather, family gatherings, birthdays, playing bridge, and other activities of daily life. There is an entry for everyday from January 1 through May 10, but the rest of the diary is blank. The second diary is for the year 1930, and is a travel diary of a trip Meta took through Virginia, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania from...
Dates: 1929-1935

Daybook and General Account Ledger

 Collection
Identifier: SC 01792
Dates: 1873-1888

Encounter with an Elephant Glass Slides

 Collection
Identifier: MS 00299
Scope and Contents Twelve glass plate slides depicting a cartoon scene of a native African American shooting a spear into the back end of an elephant. Rather than wounding the animal, it provokes it. The following scenes show the elephant holding the native underwater, almost feeding it to a crocodile, and then finally deciding to throw the native onto a prickly bush. The last scene of the cartoon slide shows the elephant walking off and the native covered in thorns. The scenes depict the African American...
Dates: circa 1880

Obelia "Bee" Graves Papers

 Collection
Identifier: 01/Mss. Acc. 2008.123
Scope and Contents This collection contains letters to Obelia "Bee" Graves, from her family and friends, while she attended Winston-Salem Teachers College in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The institution is presently known as Winston-Salem State University. Winston-Salem Teachers College was the first historically black college to grant bachelors degrees in elementary school education. The collection also includes college documents from her time at college such as report cards and her admission acceptance....
Dates: 1936-1945; Majority of material found in 1937-1939

Herman Recht Papers

 Collection
Identifier: Mss. Acc. 2001.31
Scope and Contents This collection is comprised of more than 700 letters written by Herman Recht (1908-1971), a Navy yeoman, from Camp Peary (U.S. Naval Construction Training Center), near Williamsburg, Virginia, between October 1943 and February 1946, to his wife, Esther, in Clairton, Pennsylvania. There are no letters from Esther because, as he wrote her, saving them would make him homesick.Recht had been a lawyer for eight and a half years before joining the Navy. He was very well read, and...
Dates: 1943-1946

James City County and City of Williamsburg Personal Property Tax Books

 Collection
Identifier: Mss. 68 J23
Scope and Contents This collection is composed of 69 Property Tax Books and 3 Land Tax Books for James City County, Virginia, 1866-1948, and 42 Property Tax Books and 2 Land Tax Books for Williamsburg, Virginia, 1865-1927. Most years contain two sections within one book:  one section for "White" property owners and one section for "Colored" property owners.  Many of the James City County records have separate books or are divided into Powhatan, Jamestown and Stone House districts.  For the years...
Dates: 1865-1949

Fitzhugh Lee Papers

 Collection
Identifier: SC 01268
Scope and Contents Letters written from Lee to Manning Marius Kimmel, a fellow Confederate officer and to other acquaintances concerning former Confederate officers, Reconstruction and Kimmel's experiences fighting as a mercenary with Maximilian in Mexico. Includes letter, 4 November 1875, discussing the participation of blacks in the dedication of the equestrian statue of Stonewall Jackson on Monument Avenue in Richmond and the typescript of the speech, 11 August 1875, made by W. H. Payne when nominating Lee...
Dates: 1866-1887

Leighton Dingley Letters

 Collection
Identifier: SC 00434
Content Description

Four letters to Miss Helen Cowley, Dingley's girlfriend. Dingley was assistant director of the Hamtramck Tau Beta Camp in Columbiaville, Michigan. This was a camp for underprivileged youth and Dingley writes about his time at this camp. As an African American, Dingley also details his time at the NAACP wartime conference, held in Chicago in 1943.

Dates: 1943

Bruce A. McConachie Papers, 1978-1995

 Collection
Identifier: UA 6.045
Scope and Contents

Signed typescript of "Goin' Home to Freedom," McConachie's adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin (Acc. 1986.013). Correspondence, student references, teaching evaluations, a draft and offprints of "Goin' Home to Freedom" (Acc. 1999.016).

Dates: 1978-1995

North Carolina Arrest Warrant for Bazel Bunting, a Free Man of Color

 Collection
Identifier: SC 01651
Scope and Contents

One-page arrest warrant issued from the town of Salisbury in the county of Rowen in North Carolina.

Dates: 1854 February 1

Notation of Prices for Slaves from Columbia, South Carolina

 Collection
Identifier: SC 01370
Content Description

Folded Confederate letter address sheet that was later used to record the prices for slaves sold in that area in 1864. It was possibly an auction tally.

Dates: 1864 May 30

Racial and Ethnic Ephemera Collection

 Collection
Identifier: Mss 1.05
Scope and Contents The racial and ethnic ephemera collection contains various materials regarding race, ethnicity, and racism in the United States. The collection includes papers and items that promote racial prejudice and propaganda. The collection also contains items and papers that exemplify the fight for civil and equal rights. African Americans are the most broadly represented group in the collection. Other ethnic groups include Native Americans, Asian Americans, Jewish Americans, Muslim Americans, and...
Dates: 1778-2005

Roanoke Estate Photographs

 Collection
Identifier: SC 01373
Content Description

Collection of 22 black and white photographs of various African American individuals and families. Some of the photographs are labeled with first names and the date of the picture. Dates range from the 1950's through the 1970's. There is also a newspaper clipping of Annie Poindexter that was published in loving memory of her by her children, Lonnie and Marguerite. Poindexter passed July 3, 1959. It is supposed that the collection of photographs are from a Roanoke Estate.

Dates: 1950-1970

Joel E. Spingarn Papers

 Collection
Identifier: SC 00578
Scope and Contents Includes letters to Spingarn, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People from Lowell Thomas, Sumner Welles, Edward Steichen, Charles A. Beard, Henry F. Du Pont, H. L. Mencken, and Owen Roberts concerning horticultural matters. Also includes correspondence, 1938, of Congressman Hamilton Fish, Jr., Walter White, and Springarn concerning remarks made by William E. Borah concerning lynching.Much of the correspondence deals with gardening.  He sends...
Dates: 1934-1939

United Klans of America collection

 Collection
Identifier: SC 01719
Content Description Content warning: The United Klans of America (UKA) Collection contains racist, sexist and homophobic imagery, language and content. The materials have been processed and made accesible for fair use and research purposes. The collection contains pamphlets, brochures, newsletters such as the "Fiery Cross," a Klan passport, items from Klan "neighborhood packets," and other UKA propaganda materials. A majority of the content originates from Virginia chapters of the United Klans of...
Dates: 1971-1975

Richard Williams Papers

 Collection
Identifier: SC 00912
Scope and Contents Papers, circa 1940s, of Richard Williams, an African-American soldier stationed in Alaska during World War II. Includes a diary, in which he describes the weather, fishing and other recreational activities, and his duties. There are photographs and postcards that have been glued into the diary, which depict the local post office covered in snow, the towns of Juneau and Sitka, as well as Williams and other people that he met. There are also loose photographs, which seem to have come out of...
Dates: circa 1940-1949

World War II African American Soldiers photographs

 Collection
Identifier: MS 00360
Content Description

This collection contains photographs taken by an unidentified African American soldier during World War II. The collection features photographs of soldiers training in the United States and deployed overseas in France and Belgium. Photographs including women and children are also featured in the collection.

Dates: 1945-1946