Collections

This collection contains a photo album containing fifteen original black-and-white photographs from the 1960s of a birthday celebration of a young Black girl and her family.Exceptional depiction of an 11 year old's birthday party with all of it's innocence, happiness and absence of the racial world that lives outside the doors of their grandmother's nice home.The children are wearing cone hats and there is dancing, presents, game playing, a birthday cake, blowing out candles, and an abundance of playfulness.The photographs, 3.25" x 3.25", are in plastic sleeves in a contemporary square, spiral-bound, blue leatherette album.

The papers contain correspondence, legal documents (copies), clippings, articles, research material, maps, and photographs concerning the Ivy Creek Natural Area and its history as the River View Farm owned by the Carr family (African Americans in late nineteenth century), including the original purchase by the Nature Conservancy, the formation of the Ivy Creek Foundation, and its administration of the property.

This collection contains four programs and eight photographs documenting mid-twentieth-century African American life in Roanoke and Wytheville, Virginia. Two programs for Debutante Balls hosted by "The Altruists," a club for Black women in Roanoke, are dated 1954 and 1977. The Altruist Club program for 1954 has "Stella Ednise Miller" in blue ink on the cover. A 1958 pamphlet for a Virginia Congress Colored P.T.A. annual work conference held at Scott Memorial School in Wytheville discusses "The P.T.A. Role in Fields of Education and Community." A program for the Lucy Addison High School Choir's annual Christmas concert is dated 1964. Eight undated printed photographs range in subject matter. Six photographs that are in color feature children sightseeing, a man seated with two children, a museum visit, a woman standing alongside two children, a boy smiling, and a woman smiling. Two photos in black and white feature four Black men in suits exchanging greetings, and a group of young Black children posed in rows with their names written in ink on the photograph.

This collection contains twenty black and white photographs, approximately 9 x 7 inches, depicting African American life, presumably in a segregated area in rural Virginia. The pictures have no annotations on the back, and the photographer is unknown. The location is also unclear; however, it may be somewhere near or in Fauquier County, Virginia. This location possibility is based on a photograph that depicts several storefronts, including a beauty salon which has two names painted on the window, Green & [ ] Beauty Salon. Juline Turner and Helen Blackwell, are presumably the proprietors of the salon.

This collection contains photographs, photo albums, letters, certificates, and a program belonging to Arthur L. Wharton and his wife, Betty Lou Golden Wharton, relating to Arthur's career as a mapmaker for the Central Intelligence Agency and documenting their family life.

This collection contains ninety-eight photographs of African American children and families at home and play from about the 1950s to the 1990s. Measurements range from 6" X 4" to 2" X 2" inches and are in color and black and white. Several subjects recur throughout the archive. All are unidentified; only three have any annotations on the back. The photographed figures, primarily children but some family shots included, are captured within their homes or playing outside. Activities include playing, swimming, posing, and celebrating holidays and special occasions.

This collection contains a photograph album depicting a wide range of hunting experiences in the environs of rural Culpepper County, Virginia at the turn of the century. The album contains ninety uncaptioned, mounted photos of hunting scenes including bagged game such as quail, foxes, turkeys, and deer, usually depicted with hunters and hunting dogs. There are photographs of hunters in groups from one to a half dozen, posed in the woods, with shotguns, or posed with guns and dogs. Several pictures include local African American families and guides. The photographs also feature typical southern rural life style and architecture, a variety of landscapes, the Culpeper railroad depot, and Culpeper's Waverley House hotel.

This collection contains a photograph album of a student from Hampton Institute. The original photo album, measuring 7' x 10' with 24 pages, contains 44 black and white photographs of an unidentified young Black woman, approximately 20 years old, as well as cut newspaper images and a photo postcard. She is seen at Hampton Institute, a historically Black University, in Hampton, Virginia, posing in front of school buildings, clowning around with friends, and preparing for graduation. Also included are scenic photographs of places she visited such as a dam, a church, and a parade. The last few pages contain family photographs; a couple photographs show her with an elderly woman. Some of the baby photographs are inscribed "To Grandma" and "To Grand Dad" and another is labeled "Me". The identification of the Hampton Institute as the locale comes from a real photo postcard with the title "The Hampton Institute Creative Dance Group" and a newspaper cutout of the Hampton Institute Choir along with the news caption, "They Keep Spiritual Values High at Hampton." It is possible that this album was kept by the grandparent of the young women.

This collection consists of the history of Hugh Carr, an African American born in enslavement in 1843 and his family who lived on a tract of land (River View Farm) that Carr and his wife Texie Mae Hawkins bought in 1870 after emancipation. He became one of the largest African American landowners in Albemarle County, where he raised several generations of his family in the Union Ridge Hydraulic Mills community, until his death in 1914.

This collection contains one photo album documenting the late adolescence and early adult years of Leonard H. Robinson from 1913 to 1919. Robinson, a Black man, was born and raised in Ohio. Robinson was light-skinned, which allowed him to be a part of the black and white communities of Marietta, Ohio, where he was raised, and his life in Akron, Ohio, where he lived for a short time. The album documents himself and his life, including pictures of his family and friends of both races, him as a player on a segregated football team, and shows his interest in pharmacies. Through the album, it is clear that the two worlds were kept separate, and his ability to pass as white leads to his changing racial self-identification-- in census records and other documents would self-identify as Black, "Mulatto", and White. Robinson attended Ohio Northern's Pharmacy program in 1920 and graduated in 1921.