During a recent episode of Abbott Elementary, the satisfying conclusion of the episode discussed the “specialness” of the fictional school in Philadelphia where the show takes place.

The last scene shows teachers and students assembled to hang a framed photograph showing the first Black teachers who worked at the school. The photo, which they found in the “school archives” was highlighted as a point of pride, something they could all feel good about. The photograph looked familiar to me and I wondered if it was one from Flickr Commons.

Using some image editing skills and reverse image search tools, I found that the photograph shown above was from one of the Flickr Commons members, the Library of Congress. Going to the original source of this image showed that it was from a Black photographer Thomas E. Askew who worked at the turn of the last century.

Another photograph from the same series as the one in Abbott Elementary is in the Commons.

Not much is known about Askew. He was a formerly-enslaved man, born in 1847. He lived in Atlanta, Georgia where these photographs were taken. Business directories show him working at the CW Motes Studio and he had a personal photography studio in his home. From a blog post from the Historic Oakland Foundation (where he is buried):

Askew’s personal, intimate portraits showed a broader range of the Black experience that stood in stark contrast to the stereotypes present in the media of the time. His subjects ranged in age, skin-tone, attire, and vocation and reframed the visual aesthetics and culture developed by Black Americans in the decades following emancipation. This imagery challenged the perception that the American middle class was an exclusively white experience.

He became better-known after his photographs were included in an album titled Types of American Negroes that was compiled by W. E. B. Du Bois for the Exposition Universelle of 1900 in Paris. Du Bois won a gold medal for his role as “collaborator” and “compiler” of materials for the exhibit.

The Library of Congress has determined that Du Bois specifically commissioned Askew to take photographs of Black middle-class people for this exhibition. Askew’s wife Mary was a seamstress and the role of both clothing and accessorizing was an important part of these photos. As the LoC States in their 2003 book A small nation of people : W.E.B. Du Bois and African American portraits of progress,

When we look at the photographs Askew took of these people, we can see a tension in the well-dressed students and residents of Georgia. The style of dress worn by the subjects reveals the status of the sitters, either real or hoped for; we see them today as class-conscious Blacks.

Of the albums Du Bois curated with Thomas J. Calloway, four were photographic, and included this image (photographer unknown) of a baseball team from Morris Brown College which had been founded less than two decades previously by the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Askew had nine children. Five of them (plus one neighbor) are in this photograph, which was also sent to the Paris Exposition.

From a five-second peek at a photograph in a television show, we can look closer and learn more about the history of the United States, and even of photography itself.

 

State Archives of North Carolina – Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was an educator and civil rights activist who opened the Palmer Institute for Black students in Sedalia North Carolina in 1902.

The Palmer Institute was the only accredited rural high school (for African American or white students) in Guilford County NC. It graduated generations of Black educators; Brown worked there herself until she retired in 1952.

The State Archives also have a set of sixty archival images of North Carolinian women from the 1800s through the 1950s.

Other notable collections include this set of photographs of Black soldiers from North Carolina who fought in World War I and a collection of Raleigh’s lost African American architectural landmarks (as well as some that are still around).

 

San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives – African Americans in Aviation

From the Tuskeegee Airmen to Mae Jemison, the San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives collects photographs and other ephemera, some of it from personal scrapbooks, documenting Black people working in aviation and aerospace.

Benjamin Davis, specifically had a long military career, retiring in 1998 as a four-star general.

Leroy Criss, another of the Tuskegee Airmen, kept a scrapbook where many of these images are from.

Willa Brown was the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the United States.

 

While we’re on the subject of space, NASA also has created a collection of Black astronauts and other people who worked in aerospace.

 

National Library of Medicine – African American Medical Practitioners

The NLM has curated a collection of Black workers, mostly women, in the Public Health Service for their History of Medicine division.

Mennonite Church USA – Camp Ebenezer Photographs, 1947-1950

Tillie Yoder Nauraine founded an early “fresh air” camp in Ohio for poor Black  children from Chicago. This was part of the Mennonite movement towards “building an interracial church in a segregated society.” Yoder opened the camp out of her conviction that “all people are equal in God’s eyes.”

 

Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation Cornell University – Civil Rights

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union actively worked for the rights of Black workers in including picketing Woolworths and making a New York to Washington DC Prayer pilgrimage to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that segregated schools are unconstitutional.

The Kheel Center also has documentation of the Southern Tenants Farmers Union, an integrated union which held meetings in Parkin Arkansas in 1937.

If you’d like to see more archival photography (or other material) about Black history and culture, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division at New York Public Library owns over 300,000 images, thousands of which are online and over a thousand of which are in the public domain.

Or if you’re interested in modern Black photographers read this GQ article where twenty-five Black photographers discuss what drives their work or this Guardian article showcasing the best photography by Black female photographers or this blog post at Flickr.com spotlighting the work of photographer Ayesha Kazim.

 

State Archives of North Carolina – Charlotte Hawkins Brown

Charlotte Hawkins Brown was an educator and civil rights activist who opened the Palmer Institute for Black students in Sedalia North Carolina in 1902.

The Palmer Institute was the only accredited rural high school (for African American or white students) in Guilford County NC. It graduated generations of Black educators; Brown worked there herself until she retired in 1952.

The State Archives also have a set of sixty archival images of North Carolinian women from the 1800s through the 1950s.

Other notable collections include this set of photographs of Black soldiers from North Carolina who fought in World War I and a collection of Raleigh’s lost African American architectural landmarks (as well as some that are still around).

 

San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives – African Americans in Aviation

From the Tuskeegee Airmen to Mae Jemison, the San Diego Air and Space Museum Archives collects photographs and other ephemera, some of it from personal scrapbooks, documenting Black people working in aviation and aerospace.

Benjamin Davis, specifically had a long military career, retiring in 1998 as a four-star general.

Leroy Criss, another of the Tuskegee Airmen, kept a scrapbook where many of these images are from.

Willa Brown was the first Black woman to earn a pilot’s license in the United States.

 

While we’re on the subject of space, NASA also has created a collection of Black astronauts and other people who worked in aerospace.

 

National Library of Medicine – African American Medical Practitioners

The NLM has curated a collection of Black workers, mostly women, in the Public Health Service for their History of Medicine division.

Mennonite Church USA – Camp Ebenezer Photographs, 1947-1950

Tillie Yoder Nauraine founded an early “fresh air” camp in Ohio for poor Black  children from Chicago. This was part of the Mennonite movement towards “building an interracial church in a segregated society.” Yoder opened the camp out of her conviction that “all people are equal in God’s eyes.”

 

Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation Cornell University – Civil Rights

The International Ladies Garment Workers Union actively worked for the rights of Black workers in including picketing Woolworths and making a New York to Washington DC Prayer pilgrimage to mark the anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that segregated schools are unconstitutional.

The Kheel Center also has documentation of the Southern Tenants Farmers Union, an integrated union which held meetings in Parkin Arkansas in 1937.

If you’d like to see more archival photography (or other material) about Black history and culture, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division at New York Public Library owns over 300,000 images, thousands of which are online and over a thousand of which are in the public domain.

Or if you’re interested in modern Black photographers read this GQ article where twenty-five Black photographers discuss what drives their work or this Guardian article showcasing the best photography by Black female photographers or this blog post at Flickr.com spotlighting the work of photographer Ayesha Kazim.

 

One of our goals when we started revitalizing Flickr Commons was to bring in new members. We’re so excited for you to meet them. We’re starting small but mighty.

Bringing in new people gives us a chance to spiff up our existing procedures and documentation, test out our onboarding documents, and make new friends. It also places even more precious memories and cultural heritage into a space that has long term plans, with no known copyright restrictions.

Best of all, all of these folks are existing Flickr users so we can share some of what’s special about them with you before our official “relaunch.”

Without further ado, here is our new cohort. Welcome!

Community Archives of Belleville and Hastings County

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cabhc/

Website: https://www.cabhc.ca/

These community archives, located in Belleville Ontario are comprised of “textual records, photographs, maps, newspapers, and other materials that provide information about the people, places and development of Belleville and Hastings County, Ontario.”

This covers the community of about 55,000 people, possibly nicknamed Bellevegas if Wikipedia is to be believed, on the Eastern end of Lake Ontario.

They’ve been posting content to their blog since 2015 including a story of archival survival, a low-tech crowdsourced assessment rolls project, and a tale of reassembling a scrapbook’s pages based on archival material held in three separate archives.

State Archives of North Carolina

Flickr: https://flickr.com/photos/north-carolina-state-archives/
Website: https://archives.ncdcr.gov

The North Carolina State Archives are located in Raleigh, North Carolina. They use their Flickr account to highlight some of the unique and interesting items in their collection. They also interact with the Flickr Community to try to get better information for their unidentified and poorly identified photographs.

Viewing their pictures gives you a great look at both the rural and urban parts of the state. One of my favorite albums is the Carolina Power and Light Photograph Collection, holding images from the photographic library of Carolina Power and Light. The pictures cover 1900 through 1975 give glimpses into random slices of North Carolina.

I have a personal soft spot for the Sidney E. Rochelle Photograph Collection a much smaller collection showing motorcycles in and around Durham in the early 1900s. This is where I found the single photograph of Della Crewe on her Harley Davidson motorcycle, with a sign saying “Around the World on a Harley-Davidson.” Intriguing! That image, thanks to its open license, now illustrates her Wikipedia page.

The Archives have had a blog since 2007, starting from when the State Library and Archives Building was undergoing renovations. They now have several more. There are a lot of fun stories in there though I am always partial to the odd ones.

Port Morien Digital Archive

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/portmorienarchive/

Port Morien, formerly called Cow Bay, is an historic village located on the rugged east coast of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada. It is now primarily a fishing village, but it is steeped in coal mining history. It is the location of the first commercial coal mine in North America in 1720, as well as the site of the first Boy Scout troop in North America in 1908.

Local history has been well preserved in the community over the years. Historic plaques have been installed, seniors have been interviewed, and there have been a number of audio visual presentations about the community. In addition, numerous books have been written about various aspects of Port Morien history.

Keeping with the rich tradition in preserving heritage, a small group of community volunteers have collected approximately 2900 photos of our community of Port Morien. It started as a project that was developed in conjunction with the community homecoming in 2015 called Morien Memories. Photos and short videos include people and places from the past as well as the present. Our mission is to provide a digital visual record of our community for future generations to enjoy.

We’ve also got stories about Irish folktales, UFO Desks, epic kayaking, caravaning over Christmas, Washington DC oddities and history, decorated war pigeons, community-based photo id-ing, meeting some photographers, prisoners-turned-artists, tattooing in the 1930s, turkish street photography, books in motion, a cool bell, surprise celebrities, and, of course, cat pictures.

All part of Flickr Commons’ sixteenth birthday.