Hey to Your Mama N'em

White House kitchen, taken between 1891 and 1893

Frances Benjamin Johnston, photographer

Johnston Collection, Library of Congress

[a mighty long way…]

(Source: loc.gov)

Woman with scrub board, ca. 1930

Doris Ulmann, photographer

Library of Congress

Boy selling pecans by road, near Alma, Georgia

January 1937

Arthur Rothstein, photographer

OWI/FSA Collection, Library of Congress

yearningforunity:

Mill interior, 1911. Durham, NC
(Courtesy Duke Rare Book and Manuscript Collection. Scanned by Digital Durham)

The Durham Textile Mill, located at 702-704 Fayetteville St had its place in history cemented by visits and commentary by both Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.

After Julian Carr broke the taboo against employment of African-Americans as machine operators at Durham Hosiery Mill No. 2 in 1903, John Merrick was determined to show that similar success could be achieved with not only African-American mill workers, but African-American ownership as well.

By 1911, Merrick, along with C.C. Spaulding and Dr. Aaron Moore, established the Durham Knitting Mill (also called the Durham Textile Mill) at the southwest corner of South Elm and Fayetteville Sts.

The Durham Textile Mill is described by Booker T. Washington in 1911:

“I was ready to go home, but they wanted to show me one more successful Negro plant. This was the plant known as the Durham Textile Mill, the only hosiery mill in the world entirely owned and operated by Negroes. Regularly incorporated, they operate eighteen knitting machines of the latest pattern, working regularly twelve women and two men and turning out seventy-five dozen pairs of hose each day. The goods so far are standing the test in the market, being equal in every way to other hose of the same price. They are sold mainly by white salesmen, who travel mostly in North Carolina, New York, Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama…”

(via monology)

Women selling ice cream and cake, Scotts Run, West Virginia

July 1935

Walker Evans, photographer

OWI/FSA Collection, Library of Congress

Funeral of nineteen year old Negro saw mill worker in Heard County, Georgia, May 1941

Jack Delano, photographer

Farm Security Administration Collection, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NY Public Library

“Cotton hoer near Clarksdale, Mississippi”

June 1937

Dorothea Lange, photographer

OWI/FSA Collection, Library of Congress

Postman in front of Charles L. Franck’s studio

October 29, 1941

Charles L. Franck Photographers, New Orleans, Louisiana

Charles L. Franck / Franck-Bertacci Photographers Collection, The Historic New Orleans Collection

City garbage collector Mary Davis—all 177 pounds of her—“hefts and tosses” garbage cans along with the men in her traditionally “men only” job.

October 14, 1977

Mike Mullen, photographer

Los Angeles Public Library, Herald-Examiner Collection

(Source: photos.lapl.org)

Women sorting tobacco

Pitt County, North Carolina

June 26, 1958

The Daily Reflector Image Collection, Joyner Library, East Carolina University

Emma Millhouse (right) with her friend at their after-school job in a record store, circa 1941.

Los Angeles Public Library, Shades of L.A.: African-American Community

Tobacco Picker, Rocky Mount, North Carolina

ca. 1950s

Rosalie Gwathmey, photographer

Old-time wood sawyer, New Bern, N.C.

M.E. Whitehurst & Co., photographer

ca. 1920

Mrs. Cora Graves and another woman are pictured seated in a bedroom, stringing tobacco bags.

Reidsville, North Carolina, 1939

Carleton Stutz and Peter A. Maxfield, photographers