1/2 x 12 x 12 4 12/12

A. C. McIntyre, Jubilee Singers, ca. 1905 (488.1990)

Fisk University opened in Nashville in 1866 as the first American university to offer a liberal arts education to “young men and women irrespective of color.” Five years later the school was in dire financial straits.
George L. White, Fisk treasurer and music professor then, created a nine-member choral ensemble of students and took it on tour to earn money for the University. The group left campus on October 6, 1871. Jubilee Day is celebrated annually on October 6 to commemorate this historic day… http://www.fiskjubileesingers.org/our_history.html

Julius Lindsay Schaub, Washerwoman and Family, ca. 1880s-1885 (485.1990)

Less well represented or documented than other occupations, washing was a key form of work among free African Americans in the postwar South. Here, a washerwoman and her large family have filled the yard with newly washed shirts and rugs. The view was taken by Julius L. Schaub, who worked in various cities in Georgia before setting up shop in LaGrange around 1881, where he was active primarily as a portrait photographer.

Jacob Riis, Police Station Lodgings – Men West 47th St., ca. 1888-1889 (177.1982)

Last year they [the police lodging houses] furnished altogether 147,637 lodgings, and nearly twice as many during the winter months, when there was no chance of ventilation as in the summer. On a certain cold night last week…577 homeless men and women slept in them. On that night [there were] 12 men and 11 women in West 47th Street…[there] ballot booths and other trappings of election business crowded the men’s lodging-room…A dozen shabby men snored among the lumber wherever they could find room, flat on the wooden floor, with their feet toward the stove. As many women sat or lay about in the room across the hall…
Jacob A. Riis, New York Tribune, January 31, 1892

William Adams Bibbins, [Norfolk Colored Stars], ca. 1910 (1390.1990)

The Norfolk Colored Stars were an African American touring baseball team from Norfolk, Virginia. They played in forty-two states and Canada during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, prior to the establishment of the Negro League in 1920. These men would not have been able to play with or against white baseball players due to the formal banning of blacks from baseball teams in 1887. Bibbins, an African American photographer, operated a studio in Brooklyn, New York, from 1900 to 1933.

Unidentified Photographer, [Unidentified men], ca. 1900s (1377.1990)

Weegee, [City Services Building], 1945 (16473.1993)

The City Services Building’s lower six floors were serviced by escalators. The twelve women in white uniforms are members of the City Services Building’s all-female corps of elevator attendants; the man and two women in dark uniforms are [double-deck] elevator operators (AKA “starters”). The 66-story City Services Building is located at 70 Pine Street.

(Fascinating “Streetscapes” article about the Art Deco City Service Building, currently being transformed from an office to a residential building, and “…the accomplishment of a grade-school dropout…” is here.)

Half of twelve photos of twelve people per photo, on the twelfth day of the twelfth month…