Lithograph celebrating the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified and enacted in early spring, 1870. The amendment gave all men, regardless of race, color or previous condition of servitude, the right to vote.
This image contains 17 separate images, ranging from political leaders and historical figures, to images of African American life.
Executed by Thomas Kelly of New York City, after a lithograph by James C. Beard. Published in 1870.
Group portrait of the first African American Senator and Representatives - in the 41st and 42nd Congress of the United States: Robert C. De Large, Jefferson H. Long, H.R. Revels, Benjamin S. Turner, Josiah T. Walls, Joseph H. Rainy, and R. Brown Elliot.
Currier & Ives, New York: 1872
Popular Graphic Arts collection, Library of Congress
Portrait of Congressman Josiah Thomas Walls
Taken between 1871 and 1876
State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/24810
Josiah Walls became the first African American to represent the state of Florida in Congress. He served from March 4, 1871 to January 29, 1873 and then again from March 4, 1873 until April 19, 1876. Read more about him here.
Tintype of James Weldon Johnson’s mother and sister: Helen Louise Johnson (1871-1938) and Agnes Marion Edwards (1885-1976)
ca. 1870
Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Henry Ossian Flipper, photographed in his US Military Academy cadet uniform, ca. 1877.
Flipper was the first African American graduate of West Point.
Market woman, Brazil (Rio de Janeiro)
Henschel & Benque, photographer
ca. 1870 - 1878
1877 broadside advertising the availability of land in Nicodemus, Graham County, Kansas, and encouraging African-American emigration into the state.
As noted on the poster, some African-American residents of Lexington, Kentucky, were moving to Nicodemus and consolidating themselves with the Nicodemus Town Company. Nicodemus was settled in 1877, and is the only surviving all-black settlement west of the Mississippi that was settled by former slaves during the Exoduster period after the Civil War. It is now a historic site administered by the National Parks Service.
These are the images and accounts of how people worked, raised families, built communities, worshiped, maintained relationships, expressed themselves and coped with changes and challenges in the past. Most of the subjects are Americans of African descent.
"Know from whence you came. If you know whence you came, there are absolutely no limitations to where you can go." — James Baldwin
