A Family Story: Images from the Pope House Museum
Photography is a powerful tool used to preserve moments since its creation in 1824. Particularly, African Americans used photography to create their own legacy and to affirm their own senses of beauty, self-worth, and belonging. The camera and the rapidly changing technology of producing images became important for black families to document who they were, their progress, and successes.
These photographs from the Pope House Museum Collection reveal more than a century of African Americans' efforts to use photographs to confront the negative images promoted in a segregated South. Within the frames are both intimate and formal moments of men, women, and children struggling for equality in the city of Raleigh and beyond.