Hanover, Pinopolis vic., Berkeley County, South Carolina, 1938
Frances Benjamin Johnson, photographer
Published in: Stoney, Samuel Gaillard, Plantations of the Carolina Low Country. Charleston, S.C.: Carolina Art Association, 1938.
Forms part of: Carnegie Survey of the Architecture of the South (Library of Congress)
A Negro flood refugee family who, with their rescued household goods have moved into the camp at Forrest City, Arkansas, February 1937
Edwin Locke, photographer
Library of Congress, U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information
In January 1937, excessive rain led to flooding in the Ohio and Mississippi river basins. The scale of the flooding was unprecedented. Twelve states were inundated, from West Virginia to Louisiana, affecting 1.5 million people in 196 counties and submerging 8,141,182 acres along the Ohio and Mississippi river valleys. Federal and state resources were strained to aid recovery, as the disaster occurred during the Great Depression and a few years after the Dust Bowl.
Dutch Gap, Virginia. Picket station of Colored troops near Dutch Gap canal
November 1864
Civil War glass negative collection, Library of Congress
“We saw the lightning and that was the guns; and then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns; and then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped.” — Harriet Tubman
Hovel home of two Negro families, Washington, D.C. Near ice chest is the privy, although unseen in this picture. A recent relief visit accounts for the food on the table.
September 1935
Carl Mydans, photographer
Library of Congress, US FSA/OWI collection
Villa Lewaro was the stately home of America’s first black female millionaire, Madame C.J. Walker.
Walker commissioned Vertner Tandy, the first registered black architect, to build the Italian Renaissance style estate so that black Americans could “see what could be accomplished, no matter what their background.” The mansion was constructed during 1916-1918 at an estimated cost of $250,000 (a fortune at the time). Madame Walker lived in the home from 1918 until her death in 1919. Her daughter, A’lelia Walker, inherited the estate and lived there until she died in 1931.
Located in Irvington, New York, Villa Lewaro is a private residence today and is listed as a National Historic Landmark.
Photo: VIEW OF EAST ELEVATION - Villa Lewaro, North Broadway, Irvington, Westchester County, NY; Library of Congress, Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey
(Source: loc.gov)
Homes owned by Negroes on South Park Avenue
The Negro in Chicago; a study of race relations and a race riot, by the Chicago Commission on Race Relations, 1922
New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
A Negro cabin in Nassau, Bahama Islands. no. 53757
Detroit Photographic Co. or Detroit Publishing Co.
c. 1901
Yale Collection of Western Americana, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
View of the Garret family in the front yard of their Los Angeles home, ca. 1900
Los Angeles Public Library, Shades of L.A.: African American Community
Home of an African American lawyer, Atlanta, Georgia, with men, women, and children posed on porch of house, ca. 1899 or 1900
Thomas Askew, photographer
Daniel Murray Collection (Library of Congress)
African Americans sitting outside wooden house, between 1870 and 1890 in Florida (Jacksonville vicinity)
Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views. Stereoscopic views of African Americans in Florida.
Dining room in the home owned by Frederick Douglass, located in Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
Douglass moved to the District in the mid-1870s and lived in the townhouse for over seven years.
Carol M. Highsmith, photographer (taken between 1980 and 2006)
Urban slave quarters at the Bellamy Mansion in Wilmington, North Carolina
The Bellamy mansion slave quarters are a rare example of the antebellum urban building type. The two-story brick structure has five rooms, including two five-seat privies and a laundry.
The property lies within the boundaries of the Wilmington Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Slave quarters on a plantation, possibly in Beaufort, South Carolina
c. 1862
Mathew B. Brady, photographer
Library of Congress, Gladstone Collection of African American Photographs
“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” — Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (starting tomorrow, a series on homes)