By the 1920s, Oklahoma was home to some 50 African-American towns, in addition to a large and prosperous black community living in the city of Tulsa. These towns and their self-reliant middle class and affluent residents are documented by the home movies of Reverend S. S. Jones, an itinerant minister and businessman. Known and respected by the citizens of the towns whose lives he captured on film, Rev. Jones’s work offers revealing glimpses of these communities as a haven for African Americans who very often faced discrimination elsewhere in America. The subjects are everyday life: a family on the front porch of their bungalow, shop workers at a storefront, farmers plowing their fields, children playing on seesaws in a schoolyard. Much of the material documents the economic life of the towns, from business districts filled with prosperous merchants to the homes of successful professionals, with an abundant countryside beyond. As Rhea Combs, curator of film and photography for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, points out in her commentary, here we even find a married couple who were oil barons, proof of the extraordinary progress made in the relatively short time since the end of slavery. The fashions and hairstyles, automobiles and horses, and even such details as a man manually pumping gasoline at a filling station make the films a fascinating record of the lives of Americans, and African Americans in particular, in the early 20th century.
Doing Black History
Doing Black History
Almost a century ago, historian Carter G. Woodson declared the second week in February to be "Negro History Week." The focus on African American history eventually expanded to encompass the entire month, and little by little, to permeate curricula throughout the rest of the year as well. This exhibit explores the ways African American history has been learned and taught in schools, museums, and popular culture.
In the Classroom
View Connections20In the Academy
View Connections10In Media & Culture
View Connections13Doing Black History
In Media & Culture
All-Black Towns Living the American Dream
Rare footage from the 1920s, when Oklahoma was home to some 50 African-American towns.In its Place
View Connections09Public History
View Connections10Family History
View Connections14Bad History
View Connections06Black History Month
View Connections08