Fanny Jackson Coppin

Unidentified Photographer, [Tag Day: Mrs. Fanny Jackson Coppin], 1914

This object, or tag, featuring Fanny Jackson Coppin (1837–1913), was given to contributors who donated money on Tag Day. The charity was probably Virginia C.B.M.M.S, possibly in Norfolk, Virginia, where president Jennie E. Day and Josephine M. Norcom lived.

The image of Coppin, a pioneering educator and activist, appeared as the frontispiece of her book Reminiscences of School Life, and Hints on Teaching (1913). In the book, she recounts her life story: she was born into slavery in Washington, DC, and later took a position as a servant in Newport, Rhode Island after her beloved aunt paid $125 for her freedom. Coppin’s studies led her to the Rhode Island Normal School and, in 1860, Oberlin College, the first college in the United States to admit women and African Americans. Coppin was the first African American student to be appointed a student teacher at Oberlin and the second African American woman to graduate from the college. After graduating in 1865, she moved to Philadelphia to teach Latin, Greek, and mathematics at the Institute for Colored Youth, a Quaker school in Philadelphia (now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania in Cheyney). Four years later, she became head principal, the first African American woman to assume the role in the United States, and introduced a vocational training program to the school’s classics and teacher training courses. After almost forty years of service to the school, Coppin retired in 1902 and moved to Cape Town, South Africa, where her husband Levi Jenkins Coppin was a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. She spent years organizing mission societies as well as founding the Bethel School in Cape Town. Coppin returned in Phildelphia in her later years. Coppin State University in Baltimore is named in her honor.

One Stick of Gum for Two

T. W. Ingersoll, One Stick of Gum for Two, ca. 1900
The Daniel Cowin Collection of African American Vernacular Photography

Truman Ward Ingersoll created a large number of stereographs in the 1880s in which he extensively pictured the Northwest of the United States. One Stick of Gum for Two, created around 1898, is a stereograph showing a young boy and a girl sharing a piece of gum.

Lillyn Brown

 

[Norman Thomas and E. L. Brown (Lillyn Brown)], ca. 1928
Photographer: Atelier Robertson (Hans Robertson, 1883–1950), Berlin
The Daniel Cowin Collection of African American Vernacular Photography

[Lillyn Brown (1885–1969)], ca. 1920
Photographer: Earl-Broady Studios, Schenectady, New York
The Daniel Cowin Collection of African American Vernacular Photography

A veteran of vaudeville and musical theater, Lillyn Brown’s show business career began in 1894 when she left her home in Georgia with a traveling minstrel show. Born Lillian Thomas to an African American mother and Iroquois father, Brown initially performed as the “Indian Princess” but soon acquired the role of male impersonator (or “interlocutor”) billed as “Elbrown” or “E. L. Brown,” developing an act in which she wore top hat and tails, sang several songs as a man, then revealed her long hair and continued singing as a woman. She made her only known gramophone recordings in 1921, backed by her group, the Jazzbo Syncopators. Brown toured Europe, appeared on Broadway, and performed at the major clubs in Harlem and on the Keith Circuit until her retirement in 1934. She resumed her stage career in 1949, with a dramatic role in Regina. In the 1950s, she operated an acting and singing school in Manhattan, taught for many years at the Jarahal School of Music in Harlem (Sugar Ray Robinson was one of her pupils), and was active in the Negro Actors Guild. 

The Crimson Skull

Unidentified Photographer, Production still for the film The Crimson Skull, 1921
The Daniel Cowin Collection of African American Vernacular Photography

“Race films”—movies with all-black casts produced for black audiences—were an integral part of the African American viewing experience from World War I through the mid-1940s. Plagued by low budgets and often sketchy production values, these films nevertheless offered black actors the opportunity to perform in nonstereotypical roles. The Crimson Skull, the first all-black western, was filmed in 1921 in the all-black town of Boley, Oklahoma, by the all-white Norman Film Manufacturing Company of Jacksonville, Florida. The choice of Boley was perhaps related to its fame as host of a rodeo for African American cowboys. The cast of The Crimson Skull featured Anita Bush, Lawrence Chenault, Steve Reynolds, and Bill Pickett, a world champion rodeo rider. Anita Bush (1883–1974) came to film after years of stage experience; in 1915, she formed the first black company dedicated to performing serious dramatic works. The Anita Bush Players (later called the Lafayette Players) premiered at Harlem’s Lincoln Theatre in 1915 and survived until 1932, training hundreds of black actors and spawning road companies that traveled on circuits to major cities across the United States.

Red Bird, Oklahoma

Unidentified Photographer, [Townspeople of Red Bird, Oklahoma, in front of railroad depot], ca. 1910
The Daniel Cowin Collection of African American Vernacular Photography

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, African Americans established at least 88, and perhaps as many as 200, all-black towns across the United States, the vast majority in the West following the end of Reconstruction. These incorporated communities—usually a commercial hub serving a hinterland of black farmers—attracted settlers with the promise of economic and political autonomy and escape from racial oppression. The Twin Territories—Oklahoma and Indian Territory—became the center of all-black town settlement; 32 all-black towns emerged in the region, including Red Bird, which was founded in 1902 a few miles south of Coweta, Oklahoma, by Arkansas preacher-turned-entrepreneur Elbert L. Barber (b. 1874). Barber formed the Red Bird Investment Company, which sent agents through Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas selling town lots. Black towns lost much of their appeal in 1907, when the Twin Territories became the state of Oklahoma and the ruling Democratic Party enacted Jim Crow laws and disenfranchised black voters. Political setbacks aside, the Great Depression spelled the end of most black towns. Red Bird, however, survived. Today, the small town of mostly black residents hosts educational tours organized by the Tulsa Rudisell Library through its program, “Historic All-Black Towns of Oklahoma.”