A Usable Past

Cyd Charisse - c. 1940s

1936 --- Ziegfeld girls march on the beach with an American flag. From left to right: Claire Owens, Claire Manners, Frances McInerny, Mary Lange, Monica Bannister, Bonnie Bannon, and Wanda Perry. --- Image by © John Springer Collection/CORBIS

“American Gothic,” considered to be Parks’s signature image, was taken in Washington, D.C., in 1942, during the photographer’s fellowship with the Farm Security Administration, a government agency set up by President Roosevelt to aid farmers in despair. “It’s the first professional image I ever made,” Parks says, “created on my first day in Washington.” Roy Stryker, who led the FSA’s very best documentary photographers—Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Carl Mydans, etc.—told Parks to go out and get acquainted with the city. Parks was amazed by the amount of bigotry and discrimination he encountered on his very first day. “White restaurants made me enter through the back door, white theaters wouldn’t even let me in the door, and as the day went on things just went from bad to worse.” Stryker told Parks to go talk with some older black people who had lived their entire lives in Washington and see how they had coped. “That’s how I met Ella,” Parks explains. Ella Watson was a black charwoman who mopped floors in the FSA building. Parks asked her about her life, which she divulged as having been full of misery, bigotry and despair. Parks’s simple question, “Would you let me photograph you?” and Ella’s affirmative response, led to the photographer’s most recognizable image of all time. “Two days later Stryker saw the image and told me I’d gotten the right idea but was going to get all the FSA photogs fired, that my image of Ella was ‘an indictment of America.’ I thought the image had been killed but one day there it was, on the front page of The Washington Post .” At the time, Parks couldn’t have realized that the image would go on to become the symbol of the pre-civil rights era’s treatment of minorities. (PDN)

Equal Rights Amendment protest.

First Lady Betty Ford works at her desk, where a “Don’t Tread on Me” Equal Rights Amendment doormat hangs. June 30, 1975.

Stonewall uprising, 1969

Washington, D.C., circa 1920. "Father Fealey and family." Ignatius Fealey, post chaplain at Fort Myer and future pastor of St. Agnes Catholic Church. National Photo Company Collection glass negative.

Washington, D.C. "Helen Davis, 1924." Helen's father, Dwight Davis, was Secretary of War in the Coolidge administration and a tennis champion who founded the Davis Cup. National Photo glass negative.

Freaks and Geeks (1999)

Emma Goldman, political cartoon, From the Yiddish Press c. 1901

The bookmobile 1931 -1940. The 1931 Dodge was "manned" by two ladies at all times: one to drive and one to stand on the running board to keep it from tipping over. Proper attire included "a long-sleeved dress, a broad brimmed hat and gloves" to prevent tanning.

Recruitment poster for the Women's Army Corps (WAC) dated 1965, printed in green and black, and featuring an illustration of a woman in a WAC uniform. The Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project.

Passive Resistance Training, SNCC, Atlanta, 1960, by James Karales, courtesy Duke University Library.

PASSIVE RESISTANCE TRAINING, SNCC, ATLANTA, GA, 1960, BY JAMES KARALES, COURTESY DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Scheveningen (La Haye)

Albacete

The FJ Holden, December 1953.

Glory-box girls, newlywed wives, mothers with food-conscious families, young-in-heart grandmothers, even bachelor girls and bachelors gay love Pyrex. 1953.