Emma's postcard album : Black lives in the early twentieth century

Resource Information

The work Emma's postcard album : Black lives in the early twentieth century represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in DC Public Library System. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Emma's postcard album : Black lives in the early twentieth century

Title remainder

Black lives in the early twentieth century

Statement of responsibility

Faith Mitchell

Creator

• Mitchell, Faith, 1952-

Author

• Mitchell, Faith, 1952-

Subject

• African American families -- History -- 20th century
• African American women
• African American women -- History -- 20th century
• African Americans
• African Americans -- History -- 20th century
• African Americans -- History -- Pictorial works
• African Americans -- Social conditions
• African Americans -- Social conditions | History -- 20th century
• African Americans -- Social life and customs
• African Americans -- Social life and customs -- 20th century
• African Americans in art
• African Americans in art -- 20th century
• History
• Pictorial works
• Postcards
• Postcards -- United States -- History -- 20th century
• United States
• 1900-1999
• African American families

Genre

• Pictorial works
• History

Language

eng

Summary

"The turn of the twentieth century was an extraordinarily difficult period for African Americans, a time of unchecked lynchings, mob attacks, and rampant Jim Crow segregation. During these bleak years, Emma Crawford, a young African American woman living in Pennsylvania, corresponded by postcard with friends and family members and collected the cards she received from all over the country. Her album-spanning from 1906 to 1910 and analyzed in Emma's Postcard Album-becomes an entry point into a deeply textured understanding of the nuances and complexities of African American lives and the survival strategies that enabled people "to make a way from no way." As snippets of lived experience, eye-catching visual images, and reflections of historical moments, the cards in the collection become sources for understanding not only African American life, but also broader American history and culture. In Emma's Postcard Album, Faith Mitchell innovatively places the contents of this postcard collection into specific historic and biographical contexts and provides a new interpretation of postcards as life writings, a much-neglected aspect of scholarship. Through these techniques, a riveting world we know far too little about is revealed, and we gain new insights into the perspectives and experience of African Americans-in their own words. Capping off these contributions, the text is a visual feast, illustrated with arresting images from the Golden Age of postcards as well as newspaper clippings and other archival material"--

Member of

• Atlantic migrations and the African diaspora

Assigning source

Provided by publisher

Cataloging source

MsSM/DLC

Dewey number

973/.049607300904

Illustrations

• illustrations
• maps

Index

index present

LC call number

E185.86

LC item number

.M567 2023

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

Atlantic migrations and the african diaspora