c. 1890 mounted albumen photograph of a large group of African American prisoners in what appears to be a prison yard. Nearly 60 black men face a camera set up on the other side of the prison fence while the large, whitewashed structure they were confined in looms in the background. The clarity of this photo is exceptional; nearly every man’s face is a character study in its own right. Details abound – striped prison uniforms, amputees with crude artificial limbs, barred windows, a white warden standing to the side with his hand on his hip. It all adds up to one of the most impressive photographs of an early segregated prison that we have seen.
While the location of this prison is currently unknown, the photograph was found (per the consignor) in Bolling, Alabama and there are elements of the photo that may suggest these men were part of the convict lease system that was prevalent in the Deep South around the turn of the 20th century, where Black prisoners labored under horrible conditions for the profit of corporations and state. Regardless, this is an important image that offers the possibility of additional learning and discovery. There is faint writing on the mount’s reverse that is illegible.
~10 x 8 inches, 11 x 14 inches overall.



[African Americana, African-American History, Slave, Slavery, Abolition, Liberia] [Prints, Engravings, Lithographs, Ephemera]. [Slave, Abolition, African Americana, Civil War, Prints] [African American History, Black Americana] [Abraham Lincoln, Union, Confederate, Frederick Douglass, Abolitionist, 13th Amendment, Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Barack, Obama] [Daguerreotype, Ambrotype, Tintype, CDV, Albumen, carte-de-visite, Salt print, Cabinet Card]