As a photographer, I read this article with interest. While Ms. Mars was able to use her camera to document some aspects of both Black and white life in Mississippi, as I read, I continued to think about the role of the Black photographer. All too often, our story is editorialized through the lens of white photographers. The stories of Black photographers, all across this country in various cities and towns.....those Black photographers who truly documented Black life, so often is overlooked, ignored or marginalized. I am convinced that no one can tell the story, document the story, express the story, show compassion and understanding of what it is to be Black in America....no one can accurately tell this story like a Black photographer can. In recent years, the NY Times has documented some of these Black photographers. I hope that the Times will continue to find and tell the stories of those Black photographers whose work and contributions need to be further highlighted.
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@documentarian
How possible was it for a black person in Jim Crow Mississippi to own a camera, and then, if able to own one, to be "allowed" by the dominate white KKKesque culture, to navigate among the culture and take candid or posed photographs at will?
Then comes the next element -- the development and processing. It seems to me such "uppity" behavior not only would not have been tolerated, it would have been at grave risk. Ms. Mars eventually came up against that risk.
Technology and push back over the decades have created access for everyman, via affordable instamatics, polaroids, or smartphones. Thankfully, Ms. Mars courageously took these photos and gave them to us. Otherwise the world would have documented memories to help us confront and understand the depth of racist toxicity. We cannot turn our eyes away from the truth in these photos as we address what is necessary now.
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The man in black face is a black man. He probably is an entertainer and wearing the white lipstick to earn a tip, very sad...
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Yes, let's not forget Florence Mars. With her camera she captured priceless images of Jim Crow life in the mid-1950s. But please let's also remember the documentation provided by star Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newsman, Ray Sprigle. In 1948, after spending a month traveling the Jim Crow South disguised as a black man, he used tens of thousands of words to capture the oppressions, discriminations and humilations ten million blacks suffered daily under American apartheid. Sprigle, a conservative Republican, collaborated with the NAACP and was guided/driven and hosted by an important black leader from Atlanta, John Wesley Dobbs. Sprigle's passionate 21-part series "In the land of Jim Crow" was syndicated to 14 Northern newspapers and carried into the South by the Pittsburgh Courier, America's largest and arguably most influential black weekly. Sprigle's pioneering series shocked the white North, enraged the white South, pleased millions of black Americans and their leaders, and ignited the first debate in the national media (the press and radio) about ending legal segregation in 17 states. Though Sprigle was a deeply experienced newsman of 61, what he saw and experienced while living as a black man for 30 days made him ashamed to be an American. His original series can be read online at http://old.post-gazette.com/sprigle/. Further details of his trip are in my Lyons Press book, "30 Days a Black Man."
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@bill steigerwald thank-you
The last photo, the white man in 'blackface' should answer any lingering questions about why this ritual of white supremacy is so offensive and openly racist.
What it cannot answer is why so many whites to this day continue to replay that ritual.
Lastly, we should never forget that segregation or "Jim Crow" was a means to enforce racial subordination.
While formal, legal segregation has been outlawed, racial subordination in Nashoba County Mississippi and elsewhere persists.
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In response to blackface, i think we need to step back and redefine it. I am African American and black. I do not feel that white people dressing up for halloween as one of their favorite musicians or a little boy going to school as MLK and darkening his skin should be off limits. For the record, I am not offended by it and i think we need to look at the context and well as the intent. Is the person putting down black people by darkening their skin?
Its simply not reasonable to demand that no white person can darken their skin with makeup to be a character, for any reason whatsoever. There are real problems we have to deal with as a society and this is not one of them. We can be offended by many things. As a person with dark skin, I am deeply offended by negative comments made by other African Americans, as well as others outside the race, that i hear about dark skin. Some comments have been made in my presence and directly to me. These have been general comments disparaging dark skin, casually and thoughtlessly tossed out, evidence that the speaker has taken the view as a universal truth not realizing that not everyone shares that view and that I as a listener would find it offensive.
The blackface in the photograph (and i realize he is black, but white or black) should not be equated with the two examples that I mentioned above.
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It’s a finer point but the blackfaced man is a black man accenting his blackness with white lips. It doesn’t change things but reveals the trope.
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The first picture looks like Central Park 2018. The more things change the more they stay the same. I'm sure she is treated just like a member of the family.
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Maybe so. But I will bet anything that she was not allowed to use the bathroom used by the family.
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@Brenda Pizzo And you think all nannies in NYC are?
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I’m not sure how to knock down the wall of ignorance you display. A black nanny or any black person in that area at that time was tolerated as long as they “ knew their place”. That black woman and her family would not have been able to safely attempt to vote. They would not have been welcome in the church her employers attended. Her children would not have gone to school with the white kids she took care of. Yes the white family she spent so much time with probably had affection for her, as long as she “knew her place”.
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