Picturing Home
Family albums donated to the Special Collections Library capture 130 years of a middle-class, African-American family
When Louise Davis Stone looks at photos of her great-grandmother, Chloe, she is reminded of pioneering African-American women such as Harriet Tubman. These women could not read or write, but they forged a trail toward a better life.
Chloe's descendants also forged that trail. They became not only readers and writers, but also photographers. A series of their photo albums, passed from one generation to the next, chronicles the legacy of strength and independence in Stone's family from Reconstruction to the civil rights era.
Stone, who grew up in Hampton, Va. and now lives in Chapel Hill, donated her family's five photo albums to Duke University Libraries Special Collections so that "scholars and students would have access into the life of a middle-class, African-American family."
The exhibit, "Picturing Home: Family Albums," is on display at Perkins Library through Oct. 28. Drawn from the Special Collections Library's Davis Family Papers Collection, the photographs document 130 years of Stone's family.
Including graduation, wedding and baby photos, the exhibit highlights the photography of Stone's grandmother, Georgia. A pharmacist, Georgia owned a drug store and other property in Missouri in the 1930s, a rarity for a black woman. She started taking photos with a box camera. Stone's mother, Billie, also was a photographer, converting a side porch into a makeshift darkroom to develop film.
"We enjoyed the creature comforts despite segregation and racism," Stone says as she stands in front of a set of beach photos taken at the segregated Bay Shore Beach in Virginia.
Stone hopes others will realize the value of the preserved albums and be inspired to ask questions of their own family elders.
"I didn't have the sense to ask Grandma Georgia and my mother all the things that I want to know now," Stone says. "Go see the elders in your family. Get their stories now. Preserve your heritage."
"The family tradition of visual documentation is stunning," says Karen Glynn, the library's visual materials archivist.
Adds Stone, "I'm impressed by what collections can teach someone who has no knowledge of black middle-class life. White people don't know our aspirations, goals and gracious living. It's about dispelling stereotypes. We had a life. We still have a life."