Lincoln in Black and White: 1910-1925
Synopsis:
Lincoln, Nebraska’s capital, grew from 45,000 to 55,000 residents in the years 1910–1925. The state’s second-largest city, Lincoln was also home to Nebraska’s second-largest African American community—a “small town” within the midwestern city. Local race relations were a study in contradictions. Public education and residential neighborhoods were relatively integrated; employment and social institutions were increasingly restricted. Within this setting, a laborer named John Johnson—a native of Lincoln and son of a black Civil War veteran—produced remarkable images as an itinerant photographer of the Lincoln scene, especially of its black community. Johnson left very little written record, so knowledge is fragmentary of his working techniques and of his collaborators or assistants. But his visual legacy takes people through the streets, onto the front porches, and into the backyards and living rooms of a vibrant community.
Book Excerpt:
In 1965 I was just beginning my experiments with photography taking snapshots with my parent’s Browne Hawkeye camera and developing the film in the basement. One day, down-the-street neighbors Doug Boilesen and his father Axel, both avid garage sale sleuths who were always on the lookout for items relating to Edison phonographs, told me that they had purchased, for fifteen dollars, a stack of old 5”X7” glass plate negatives. They spied what looked like a picture of a little girl next to a phonograph as well as images of people and downtown Lincoln buildings under construction. I purchased the negatives, minus the picture of the phonograph (which is now in the Friends of the Phonograph image collection) on the time payment plan.
I immediately set out to inventory the collection. I found that there were lots and lots of pictures of people, mostly environmental portraits of Lincoln’s black citizens. I put all of those in one pile and put all of the street scenes in another. With the help of some folks in Lincoln I was able to determine that the street scenes were taken around 1915. What interested me most was that people actually wanted to buy prints made from those old glass plates. A small flurry of retail transactions followed and my photographic career was launched thanks to some negatives shot by another photographer.
In 1968, the negatives followed me to California and eventually each of the 276 negatives got its own envelope. Years passed, then in May 1994, my mother, who still resided in Lincoln, noticed a small item in the local paper about a researcher at the University of Nebraska who was doing a story on black owned businesses. The researcher discovered a clutch of 36 5X7 glass negatives housed in a woman’s closet. These photographs depicted newly arrived immigrants and blacks that lived in an area called South Bottoms. Local historians pegged the time frame of the photographs around 1910-1925. They also hinted that the photographer might be one Earl McWilliams (1892-1960) an African-American who worked part time in the darkroom at a local photo studio.
I contacted Lincoln historian Ed Zimmer and John Carter, a curator at the Nebraska State Historical Society about my collection. In short order, my collection was proclaimed a State treasure. In March 2000 Nebraska Governor Mike Jonanns honored Earl McWilliams and the McWilliams family in a ceremony at the Nebraska State Capitol building.
As time went on it seems that every discovery about the collection, its subjects and its photographer led to new questions. When Ed Zimmer was interviewing people who had relatives in the photographs information came to light that one John Johnson may have been the photographer. It’s likely that we’ll never know absolutely if all of the photographs were taken by one person or if they were collaborations. Some evidence suggests that they worked together since Johnson appears in some of the photographs and the last verifiably dated photograph corresponds to the date that McWilliams moved from Lincoln to Colorado.
Over the years I’ve poured over the images looking for a refection of the photographer in a window or a shiny surface. My search has yielded one shadowy image reflected in a brass doorknob and one image of the photographer’s or his helper’s hand. That image was taken at a zoo. The photographer prefocused the camera on a wire fence then either he or his helper held out their hand with a piece of food and enticed a deer to come and nibble. At the precise instant the deer got to the wire the photographer squeezed the shutter. That image may be the only image of the photographer we’ll ever have. However, what we will always have is an extraordinary collection of images produced by an astoundingly capable hand.
Douglas Keister, Chico, California
Topics/Categories:
African American Culture, African American History, Photography
Type of Work:
Publishers:
Original Publish Date:
July 1, 2008
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