A True Likeness: The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts 1920-1936

by Richard Samuel Roberts

Description

Extraordinary photos that reveal the social, economic, and cultural realities of the Black South A True Likeness showcases the extraordinary photography of Richard Samuel Roberts (1880-1935), who operated a studio in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1920 to 1935. He was one of the few major African American commercial photographers working in the region during the first half of the twentieth century, and his images reveal the social, economic, and cultural realities of the black South and show more document the rise of a small but significant southern black middle class. The nearly two hundred photographs in A True Likeness were selected from three thousand glass plates that had been stored for decades in a crawl space under the Roberts home. The collection includes "true likenesses" of teachers, preachers, undertakers, carpenters, brick masons, dressmakers, chauffeurs, entertainers, and athletes, as well as the poor, with dignity and respect and an eye for character and beauty. Thomas L. Johnson and Phillip C. Dunn received a 1987 Lillian Smith Book Award for their work on this book. This new edition of A True Likeness features a new foreword by Elaine Nichols, the supervisory curator of culture at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. A new afterword is provided by Thomas L. Johnson. show less

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Salsabrarian 3,572 reviews

Read about the new edition in the University of South Carolina alumni magazine and found this older edition at the library. Beautiful professional portraits and photographs of black South Carolinians from the 1920s, many of them middle class. Amazing story that the photographer's glass plates had been stored for 50 years in the house crawl space until a USC archivist visited the descendants to follow up on information he'd heard about Richard Samuel Roberts.

Feb 16, 2020

RCornell 168 reviews

Slipcase. First edition

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