How Black Americans used portraits and family photographs to defy stereotypes

Portrait of Betty and Willis Coles by William Bullard from about 1902. Courtesy of Frank Morrill, Clark University and the Worcester Art MuseumUnstable. Criminal. Impoverished. Absentee fathers. Neglectful mothers. “A tangle of pathology,” as the Moynihan Report, a 1965 study on Black poverty, put it. For decades, the Black family has been denigrated as dysfunctional. When mass media exploded in the late 19th century, degrading images of Black Americans – as inferior, clownish and dangerous – sa

Related Keywords

Virginia ,United States ,Worcester Art Museum ,Massachusetts ,Worcester ,Boston ,Clark University ,Paris ,France General ,France ,New York ,South Carolina ,American ,Americans ,Abraham Perkins ,Margaret Dillon ,Theodore Roosevelt ,Janette Greenwood ,William Bullard ,Jennie Bradley Johnson ,Zun Lee ,Raymond Schuyler ,Frank Morrill ,Moynihan Report ,Black Americans ,President Theodore Roosevelt ,White Americans ,Portrait ,Family ,Family Members ,