Stereoviews

Unidentified Photographer, [Two Unidentified Women Reading a Letter], ca. 1880s

George Barker, The Johnstown Calamity, 1889

Unidentified Photographer, How De Debil Do Dey Make A Bicycle, ca. 1900

Handheld stereoviewer

Oliver Wendell Holmes invented the “Holmes type” stereoviewer. He explains his device in an article in the Atlantic Monthly from 1859 :

A stereoscope is an instrument which makes surfaces look solid. All pictures in which perspective and light and shade are properly managed, have more or less of the effect of solidity; but by this instrument that effect is so heightened as to produce an appearance of reality which cheats the senses with its seeming truth…The first effect of looking at a good photograph through the stereoscope is a surprise such as no painting ever produced. The mind feels its way into the very depths of the picture. The scraggy branches of a tree in the foreground run out at us as if they would scratch our eyes out. The elbow of a figure stands forth so as to make us almost uncomfortable. Then there is such a frightful amount of detail, that we have the same sense of infinite complexity which Nature gives us. A painter shows us masses; the stereoscopic figure spares us nothing,—all must be there, every stick, straw, scratch, as faithfully as the dome of St. Peter’s, or the summit of Mont Blanc, or the ever-moving stillness of Niagara. The sun is no respecter of persons or of things.

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.”