This record is made available under an Universal 1.0 Public Domain Dedication Creative Commons license.
This collection is open for research.
This collection was a purchase from Max Rambod to the Small Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia Library on 10 July 2025.
MSS 16923, African Americans in rural Virginia photographs, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.
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.
Genealogy research uncovered a birth certificate for Juline Turner's daughter, Katie Ross, born in 1917. The birth certificate notes that Juline was twenty years old, indicating her birth year to be 1897, and that she was born in Fauquier County, Virginia.
The pictures depict a Black, rural neighborhood that includes pick-up trucks, overalls and work boots, humble dwellings, and vegetation. One photograph depicts a main street of the town, which includes telephone poles and a few businesses, including a small convenience store with signs of Coca Cola, Pepsi, Camel cigarettes, Model "sporting tobacco" (a brand native to Virginia), and other daily necessities.
Other photographs depict several Black people standing or seated with family members in front of wooden homes. There are photographs of children playing games, including a young boy with a holstered toy revolver on his hip, kids playing stickball, and standing on railroad tracks. The photographs also show men, women, and children performing household chores, including cleaning and hanging up the laundry to dry, making meals for the family, and one photograph shows a father in work clothes, dishing out a meal for himself and his three young children. Another photograph depicts an older man showing his cellar and a cistern. Many of the homes have elevated porches in many of the dwellings along the main street. Two photographs show a white man in a suit who strikes up a conversation with the residents of the town, including a mother on her front porch and a young man along the main street.