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The Center Awards: Curator’s Choice Award 1st Place: Rich Frishman

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In August 1955, 14-year old Emmett Till, visiting from Chicago, walked into Bryant's General Store in Money, Mississippi with his cousins, innocently whistling to control his stutter. The young white woman tending the store, Carolyn Bryant, told her husband that Emmett Till had whistled at her and made flirtatious advances. Several nights after the store incident, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam went armed to Till's great-uncle's house and abducted the boy. They took him away and beat and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and throwing his body into Black Bayou from this bridge. Three days later, Till's body was discovered and retrieved 2 miles downstream, in the Tallahatchie River. Till's body was returned to Chicago where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket. "The open-coffin funeral held by Mamie Till Bradley exposed the world to more than her son Emmett Till's bloated, mutilated body. Her decision focused attention not only on U.S. racism and the barbarism of lynching but also on the limitations and vulnerabilities of American democracy". Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his open casket, and images of his mutilated body were published in black-oriented magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Intense scrutiny was brought to bear on the lack of black civil rights in Mississippi, with newspapers around the U.S. critical of the state. Although initially local newspapers and law enforcement officials decried the violence against Till and called for justice, they responded to national criticism by defending Mississippians, temporarily giving support to the killers. In September 1955, Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an all-white jury of Till's kidnapping and murder. Protected against double jeopardy, the two men publicly admitted in a 1956 interview with Look magazine that they had killed Till. Decades later, Carolyn Bryant disclosed that she had fabricated the story that Till made verbal or physical advances towards her in the store. In 2004 the case was officially reopened by the United States Department of Justice. The defense team in the 1955 trial had questioned whether the body was that of Till. In 2004, Till's body was exhumed and positively identified. Till's original casket was then donated to the Smithsonian Institution and it is displayed in the National Museum of African American History and Culture. After Milam and Bryant were acquitted, they initially remained in Mississippi, but were boycotted, threatened, attacked and humiliated by local residents. Milam died in 1980 at the age of 61, and Bryant died in 1994 at the age of 63. Bryant expressed no remorse for his crime and stated: "Emmett Till is dead. I don't know why he just can't stay dead."
©Rich Frishman, : Black Bayou Bridge; Glendora, Mississippi 2018 In 1955, when Emmett Till was fourteen, his mother put him on a train from Chicago to spend the summer visiting his cousins in Money, Mississippi. She never saw him alive again. Her son was abducted and brutally murdered on August 28, 1955, after being falsely accused of interacting inappropriately with a white woman. His body was dumped into the muddy waters below Black Bayou bridge. The following month, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam faced trial for Till’s kidnapping and murder but were acquitted by the all-white jury after a five-day trial and a 67-minute deliberation. One juror said, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop, it wouldn’t have taken that long.” Only months later, in an interview with Look magazine in 1956, protected against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam admitted to killing Emmett Till. In 2017 the alleged victim, Carolyn Bryant, admitted that Emmett was innocent.

Congratulations to Rich Frishman for his First Place win in CENTER’S Curator’s Choice Award for her project, Ghosts of Segregation. The Choice Awards recognize outstanding photographers working in all processes and subject matter. Images can be singular or part of a series. Winners receive admission to Review Santa Fe portfolio reviews and participation in a winner’s exhibition at Pictura Gallery in Bloomington, IN.

Juror Makeda Best, Curator of Photography, Harvard Art Museum shares her insights:

This year’s Curator’s Choice awards were notable for their unique pursuit of issues related to citizenship and belonging, gender, place, historical memory, ecology and sustainability. They looked closely at the immediate world around them and the people in it. In the lives of their mothers, or even in the interiors of cars, they illuminated a profound and mundane significance. Vivid, poignant, surprising, brave, and critical – from a story of culture and migration through teenagers living in New Mexico to a retracing of aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart’s ill-fated flight around the globe to documents of a dwindling plant species, what united the submissions was impeccable technical execution through a variety of approaches including camera-less images, tintypes, studio-based images, and panoramas. The submissions introduce new vantage points through which to rediscover everything from our planet to the graphic beauty of paper torn from surfaces on the streets of Paris. The strongest submissions were innovative, well edited, focused and cohesive projects that successfully utilized the images as carriers of meaning as opposed to relying heavily on technical flourishes, descriptive texts and captions. What is unforgettable, finally, is the resounding commitment to photography as a tool for connection.

Frishman’s investigation reminds us of the histories that survive in the built environment – of the bone beneath our feet – and of how space/place transforms people’s everyday reality and sense of self. Cobb’s unsettlingly mundane subject matter nonetheless takes us on a journey that is visceral, surprising, fantastic, and frightening all at once. And finally, Astrid Jahnsen’s works ask us to reconsider the visual culture of everyday life and to locate the alternative stories therein. The stories, or the pictures, are not just merely about the overlooked, they are elegant and nuanced in their own right.

Makeda Best is the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums. Her forthcoming book on Civil War photography will be published in 2020 by the Pennsylvania State University Press. Her most recent exhibition was Time is Now: Photography and Social Change in James Baldwin’s America.

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Crossroads from Rich Frishman on Vimeo.

Remains of Negro League Stadium; Hamtramck, Michigan
©Rich Frishman, Negro League Stadium; Hamtramck, Michigan 2018 2018 Built in 1930, Hamtramck Stadium was home to the Negro National League Detroit Stars in 1930-1931 and again in 1933. The field was also home to the Detroit Wolves of the Negro East-West League in 1932, and to the Negro American League Detroit Stars in 1937.

Ghosts of Segregation

 All human landscape has cultural meaning. Because we rarely consider our constructions as evidence of our priorities, beliefs and desires, the testimony our landscape tells is perhaps more honest than anything we might intentionally present. Our built environment is society’s autobiography writ large.

Ghosts of Segregation photographically explores the vestiges of America’s racism as seen in the vernacular landscape, hidden in plain sight: Schools for “colored” children, theatre entrances and restrooms for “colored people,” lynching sites, juke joints, jails, hotels and bus stations. What is past is prologue.

We often take our daily environments for granted, but within even the most mundane edifice may lurk an important bit of history. If we are curious and diligent, we can read our surroundings like a book. That stairway apparently to nowhere once went somewhere. The curious palimpsest of bricks covers something. What purpose did they serve?

 Segregation is as much current events as it is history.  These ghosts haunt us because they are very much alive.  While this project to date has focused on the Deep South, prejudice has no geographic boundaries. I have all of America to explore.

At six feet tall and one foot thick, the half-mile long wall was built to segregate a black community from an adjacent white development. It was never meant to physically separate people, but instead to do so legally and symbolically. It all started in 1934, when the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was founded. The FHA signed into law the process of Òredlining,Ó the act of denying loans and financial services to black neighborhoods while granting them for white neighborhoods. This widened the economic gap between races to a whole new level. The neighborhood of Wyoming was a redlined black neighborhood for nearly a decade until the early 1940s, when developers wanted to build a white development in the area. They were denied by the FHA because their plan placed the white neighborhood Òtoo closeÓ to the black neighborhood. Thinking quickly, the developers responded by building a half-mile long wall directly in between Mendota Street and Birwood Avenue for a full three blocks. This was enough to be given the nod of approval from the U.S. government. The wall was the official racial divider for over 20 years, until the Fair Housing Act abolished such racist policies in 1968. The wall itself, however, still remains today Ñ as does segregation in Detroit. While both sides of the wall are currently black neighborhoods, the area around DetroitÕs Eight Mile Road is staunchly divided between the majority white north side and majority black south side. Although the wall doesnÕt run alongside Eight Mile Road, itÕs become known as the ÒEight Mile WallÓ as a reference to the modern-day epicenter of DetroitÕs segregation. (ItÕs also called the ÒWailing WallÓ or ÒBirwood Wall.Ó) As a harsh reminder of the racial divisions of the past and the present, the Eight Mile Wall is yet to be knocked down. It remains a divider to this day Ñ albeit symbolically, not legally Ñ between adjacent backyards for three straight blocks. However, the wall has lost its blank white paint job and gotten a makeover. Over the years, it has been painted over with colorful murals, together sending a brighter message of unity, community, and progress.
©Rich Frishman, 8 Mile Wall; Detroit, Michigan 2018 When the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) was founded in 1934, the process of “redlining,” the act of denying loans and financial services to black neighborhoods while granting them for white neighborhoods, was codified. The neighborhood of Wyoming was a redlined black neighborhood for nearly a decade until the early 1940s, when developers wanted to build a white development in the area. They were denied by the FHA because their plan placed the white neighborhood “too close” to the black neighborhood. Thinking quickly, the developers responded by building a half-mile long wall directly in between Mendota Street and Birwood Avenue for a full three blocks. This was enough to be given the nod of approval from the U.S. government. The wall was the official racial divider for over 20 years, until the Fair Housing Act abolished such racist policies in 1968.

 Notes on Ghosts

History is all around us, hidden in plain sight.  Even the most mundane edifice has a story. If we take the time and make the effort, we can learn to read the landscape like a book. In so doing, we might learn about ourselves and our world.

When I began my previous project exploring our cultural landscape, American Splendor, part of my impetus was to give vent to my sense of humor. I was more sanguine at the time. The Big Fish Supper Club is just too hilarious an example of mimetic architecture to go undocumented. American Gothic’s Nan Wood and Byron McKeeby (ala Seward Johnson) towering over car club enthusiasts at the Iowa State Fairgrounds overflows with cultural irony that I felt compelled to capture.

In the Fall of 2016 things changed. No longer did our American culture seem benign, let alone funny. From my left-of-liberal point of view, the dark forces that have always existed in our country now were dominant. My enthusiasm for documenting amusing aspects of Americana waned. I did not know what to do.

In fact, I had a clue. Shortly after the election, Malcolm Daniel called to tell me the Museum of Fine Art Houston wished to acquire a print of mine, “Segregation Wall; Gonzales, Texas 2016.” I had photographed this painful reminder of our cultural history as I wandered around Texas after FotoFest two years ago. I began researching other extant examples of American apartheid.

With just a few exceptions, most of what I uncovered did not resonate for me visually. Maybe I was just tuned into the wrong frequency. This went on for 18 months. Then, as I was researching routes for my 2018 post-FotoFest road trip, I stumbled upon a Mississippi historical preservation website. In particular, the writings of E.L. Malvaney (a pseudonym) were a treasure trove of ideas.  Those nuggets have led me to a much broader vein of gold.

On that first road trip I spent 4 weeks driving around Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, photographing palimpsests that reveal the dark days of Jim Crow.  The painful reality is that none of this is actually “past,” it is present. Segregation, racial oppression, and inequality are current events. I call this project “Ghosts of Segregation,” but these ghosts continue to haunt us because they are very much alive.

Since that initial trip through the Deep South just 12 months ago, I have documented numerous sites in the North, as well. Prejudice has no geographic boundaries; I have all of America to explore. – Rich Frishman

Houston Negro Hospital School of Nursing, built in 1931, now stands abandoned along with the hospital with which it once was associated. The Houston Negro Hospital was created in 1926 when the earlier black Union-Jeramiah Hospital was no longer capable of accommodating the rapidly growing black population of Houston, Texas. African American community leaders began a campaign to garner support from local physicians when oilman Joseph Cullinan, who had earlier supported the existing hospital, donated $80,000 to construct a new facility. The city of Houston donated three acres of land in the Third Ward for the new fifty-bed hospital. Construction began in 1925. The dedication of the hospital was held on June 19, 1926, a major local holiday in Texas known as ÒJuneteenth,Ó which commemorates the day Emancipation occurred in the state. At the dedication a bronze tablet from the Tiffany Company was unveiled stating that the building was erected Òin memory of Lieutenant John Halm Cullinan,Ó Joseph CullinanÕs son who had died during World War I. The tablet also declared that the hospital was Òdedicated to the American Negro to promote self-help, to insure good citizenship, and for the relief of suffering, sickness, and disease among them.Ó The hospital officially opened in July 1927 and became the first non-profit hospital for black patients in Houston. The hospital also provided work for black physicians who were not allowed to admit patients in the Òblack wardsÓ of other Houston hospitals. Black physicians such as Drs. Thelma Patten Law and George Patrick Alphonse Forde emerged as community leaders in resisting the white control over the institution while they honed their medical skills and worked to insure the hospitalÕs financial stability. The entire hospital staff was black as well which was rare in the United States at that time. Isaiah Milligan Terrell retired from his presidency at Houston College in 1925 to become the first superintendent at the hospital. The hospital offered memberships to families for $6 a year, granting eligibility for all members for free hospital care. This prepaid system continued until 1938. The Houston Negro Hospital Nursing School was established in 1931 next to the hospital. This was the first educational institution created for the training of black nurses in Houston. The entire facility was renamed Riverside General Hospital in 1961. ©Rich Frishman ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
©Rich Frishman, Houston Negro Hospital School of Nursing; Houston, Texas 2018 Houston Negro Hospital School of Nursing, built in 1931, now stands abandoned along with the hospital with which it once was associated. The Houston Negro Hospital was created in 1926 when the earlier black Union-Jeramiah Hospital was no longer capable of accommodating the rapidly growing black population of Houston, Texas. African American community leaders began a campaign to garner support from local physicians when oilman Joseph Cullinan, who had earlier supported the existing hospital, donated $80,000 to construct a new facility. The city of Houston donated three acres of land in the Third Ward for the new fifty-bed hospital. Construction began in 1925. The hospital officially opened in July 1927 and became the first non-profit hospital for black patients in Houston. The hospital also provided work for black physicians who were not allowed to admit patients in the “black wards” of other Houston hospitals. The entire hospital staff was black as well, which was rare in the United States at that time. The hospital offered memberships to families for $6 a year, granting eligibility for all members for free hospital care. This prepaid system continued until 1938. The Houston Negro Hospital Nursing School was established in 1931 next to the hospital. This was the first educational institution created for the training of black nurses in Houston.

Rich Frishman’s photography is included in a wide range of private and institutional collections, including the New Orleans Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Smithsonian Institution and the Amon Carter Museum. His work has garnered dozens of prestigious awards, including the PhotoNOLA Review Prize (2019), two Sony World Photography Awards (2018), Communication Arts Photography Award (2018), Photo District News Photo Annual (2018), Michael H. Kellicutt Award (2013), International Photo Annual Award (2013), and Critical Mass finalist (2012, 2015). He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1983. Gallery shows include Clark Gallery (Boston USA), Berlanga Fine Arts (Chicago USA), Minneapolis Photo Center (Minneapolis USA), and Sol Mednick Gallery (Philadelphia USA).

Born and raised in Chicago, Frishman began making photographs at age 5, when he was given a Kodak Brownie for his birthday. That simple gift sparked a lifetime passion. Photography became a language with which to explore and explain life.

Frishman specializes in magnificently detailed immersive large-format prints, constructed of hundreds of individual photographs that he meticulously blends together to create a single image. His current project, “American Splendor,” explores the cultural landscape of the United States. These authentic scenes reflect Frishman’s background in photojournalism and his interest in history. Often there is a measure of irony, humor, or pathos in his choice of subject matter, but he primarily considers himself a visual archaeologist, documenting the future remains of a lost civilization.

Frishman lives with his family on an island outside Seattle, Washington.

Room #10, Victoria Colored School; Victoria, Texas Twenty-one former slaves gathered together at the corner of Convent and Depot streets on June 27, 1868, and formally organized the First Colored Baptist Church in Victoria County. It was renamed Palestine Missionary Baptist Church on September 11, 1868. That same month property was conveyed for the town's first freedmen's school, named Brauns Colored School. Early Baptist worship services were held in Brauns school and at Frazier Colored Methodist School at the corner of Convent and River Streets. Under the leadership of the Rev. Mitchell Harrison, the members of Palestine Missionary Baptist Church built their first sanctuary between 1871 and 1873. It was replaced in 1886 with a larger structure built on the corner of Convent and Navarro Streets. A new brick church building was erected at the corner of Convent and Depot streets in 1953. Throughout its history, this church has maintained programs with an emphasis on educational, social, civic, and missionary responsibilities. Members of the church have played an important role in community activities, and over the years four additional congregations were formed from the Palestine Missionary Baptist Church fellowship. (1991) ©Rich Frishman/ALL RIGHTS RESERVED April 4, 2018
©Rich Frishman, Entrance to Room #10 Victoria Colored School; Victoria, Texas 2018 The Victoria Colored School was built in an area of Victoria that had been settled by freedmen after the Civil WarThe building was next door to the Freedman School (built in 1868 by the which was turned into a dormitory for teachers of The Colored School. Slavery had been illegal in Texas under Mexican rule but, in 1836, with the establishment of the Republic of Texas slavery was legalized. For the first time, cotton farming in the Victoria area was profitable. The flat, fertile, well-watered, “empty” ranch lands throughout Texas interested cotton growers in the southeast. They began immigrating to Victoria,buying land and bringing slaves with them to work the fields. Twenty-five years after the legalization of slavery, at the outbreak of the Civil War, slaves equaled more than half of Victoria County’s population. The influx of Southerners had surpassed the influx of the strict-abolitionist German immigrants and Victoria County voted overwhelmingly for the succession of Texas. The war eventually destroyed the market for cotton. Former slaves either became sharecroppers or drifted into the city, establishing a community and social infrastructure. After the war, area leaders wanted to establish schools for African Americans that would channel them into vocational training for the kind of workforce area businesses demanded. Children in grades one to seven attended free, but citizen resistance to free education resulted in students in grades 8 through 10 paying a fee until 1906.
During the Jim Crow era "colored people" were forced to enter the State Theatre in Meridian, Mississippi by walking down an alley to a separate colored entrance and colored ticket booth. More elaborate than many other theatres, the magnificent Temple actually had an awning over its segregated entrance. ©Rich Frishman ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
©Rich Frishman, Temple Theatre Colored Entrance; Meridian, Mississippi 2018 During the Jim Crow era “colored people” were forced to enter the Hamasa Shrine Temple Theater in Meridian, Mississippi by walking down an alley to a separate colored entrance and colored ticket booth. More elaborate than many other theatres, the magnificent Temple actually had an awning over its segregated entrance.
During the first half of the 20th century, the small community of Idlewild was known as ÒThe Black Eden.Ó It was one of the few resorts in the country where African-Americans were allowed to vacation and purchase property, before discrimination was outlawed in 1964 through the Civil Rights Act of 1964. From 1912 through the mid-1960s, Idlewild was an active year-round community and was visited by well-known entertainers and professionals from throughout the country. At its peak, it was one of the most popular resorts in the Midwest and as many as 25,000 would come to Idlewild in the height of the summer season to enjoy camping, swimming, boating, fishing, hunting, horseback riding, roller skating, and night-time entertainment. When the 1964 Civil Rights Act opened up other resorts to African-Americans, Idlewild's boomtown period subsided, but the community continues to serve as a vacation destination and retirement community, and as a landmark of African-American heritage.
©RIch Frishman, The Black Eden; Idlewild, Michigan 2018 The small resort town of Idlewild, Michigan was known as the Black Eden, and at its height in the 1950s and ‘60s, more than 25,000 African Americans would travel from Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Indianapolis each summer to visit its 2,700 acres of lakes and western Michigan wilderness for intellectual stimulation, partying, and a sense of community. Founded in 1912 by four white couples who saw the need for resorts for the growing African American middle and upper middle class, Idlewild became a place for intellectual and political interaction among prominent members of the 1920s African American community, including William Pickens and W.E.B. Du Bois. “If you were a doctor, a lawyer, an entrepreneur, an educator, and you had the income to travel either by train or auto, it was a place that you wanted to be,” says Dr. Ronald Stephens, a professor of 20th-century African American history and culture at Ohio University and author of Idlewild: The Rise, Decline and Rebirth of a Unique African-American Resort Town. “The idea of having that sense of community, independence, and ownership was a really big deal in black America.” But the increasingly rapid growth of the working black middle class after World War II, particularly with the rise of the auto industry in the Midwest, created a shift in the culture of Idlewild. “By the 1950s and ’60s, the crowd that was coming up to Idlewild, though they were educated, had a different idea of vacation,” says Stephens. “They were going up there to have fun and party.”
In the 1920s, The Travelers was a bare-bones 13-room, second-story hotel that accommodated colored railroad workers. It is located at 212 Third Street, in an area of Clarksdale once referred to as "The New World," the belly of the blues and red light district. It was commonly referred to as a "railroad hotel" because its guests were mostly rail workers. As of March 2018 it was undergoing restoration to become a boutique hotel.
©Rich Frishman, : Railroad Hotel; Clarksdale, Mississippi 2018 In the 1920s, The Travelers was a bare-bones 13-room, second-story hotel that accommodated colored railroad workers. It is located at 212 Third Street, in an area of Clarksdale once referred to as “The New World,” the belly of the blues and red light district. It was commonly referred to as a “railroad hotel” because its guests were mostly rail workers. As of March 2018 it was undergoing restoration to become a boutique hotel. title: Remains of E.H. Henry Rosenwald School; Eagle Lake, Texas 2018 During the dark days of Jim Crow, many Southern communities had no schools for children of color. These children would receive their education, if they were lucky, at home or in a church. Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, president and part-owner of Sears Roebuck and Company, in collaboration with Booker T. Washington, created a charitable foundation in 1917 to help African American communities build schools for their children. They required local communities to raise matching funds to encourage their commitment to these projects. The collaboration of Rosenwald and Washington led to the construction of almost 5,000 schools for black children in the eleven states of the former Confederacy as well as Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland. As a result of their collaboration, approximately one-third of African American children were educated in these schools. Only approximately 100 buildings remain (2019), almost all either repurposed or in decay. Days before I arrived to document this school it was demolished.
The only remaining Rosenwald gymnasium was demolished days before I arrived in Eagle Lake, Texas to photograph it. During the dark days of Jim Crow, many communities had no schools for children of color. These children would receive their education, if they were lucky, at home or in a church. Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, part-owner of Sears Roebuck and Company created a charitable foundation in 1917 to help African American communities build schools for their children. The Rosenwald Fund (also known as the Rosenwald Foundation, the Julius Rosenwald Fund, and the Julius Rosenwald Foundation) was established in 1917 by Julius Rosenwald and his family for "the well-being of mankind." Rosenwald became part-owner of Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1895, serving as its president from 1908 to 1922, and chairman of its Board of Directors until his death in 1932. He became interested in social issues, especially education for African Americans in the rural South, which was segregated and chronically underfunded. He provided funding through Dr. Booker T. Washington of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now known as Tuskegee University), a historically black college (HBCU), to support improving education for black children prior to founding the fund to establish a program to build rural schools for black children, primarily in the South.
©Rich Fishman, Remains of E.H. Henry Rosenwald School; Eagle Lake, Texas 2018 During the dark days of Jim Crow, many Southern communities had no schools for children of color. These children would receive their education, if they were lucky, at home or in a church. Philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, president and part-owner of Sears Roebuck and Company, in collaboration with Booker T. Washington, created a charitable foundation in 1917 to help African American communities build schools for their children. They required local communities to raise matching funds to encourage their commitment to these projects. The collaboration of Rosenwald and Washington led to the construction of almost 5,000 schools for black children in the eleven states of the former Confederacy as well as Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland. As a result of their collaboration, approximately one-third of African American children were educated in these schools. Only approximately 100 buildings remain (2019), almost all either repurposed or in decay. Days before I arrived to document this school it was demolished.
E.F. YOUNG HOTEL; Meridian, Mississippi 2018 E. F. Young Jr.’s hotel was one of two listings of accommodations for black travelers in Mississippi under the years of segregation and Jim Crow laws, listed in Victor Green's travel guide, The Green Book. E. F. Young Jr. was born in 1898 the son of a farmer and eventually became one of the wealthiest African American businessmen in the Southeast. He started as a barber as a young man, experience he used to formulate his own hair care products. On February 14, 1933, he registered the E. F. Young Jr. Manufacturing Company – the first ethnic hair care product manufacturer in the United States – with the U.S. Patent Office. It quickly became one of the largest African-American owned companies in the South. In 1946, Young realized his final goal in the establishment of his commercial empire. That year he opened his own barber and beauty shop, as well as the first and only Meridian hotel to serve African Americans. He called his new establishment the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel. YOUNG HAD LONG BEEN involved in the struggle for Civil Rights in Meridian. During the 1940s, he served as the Vice President of Meridian’s Chapter of the NAACP. By 1942, Young had helped recruit nearly one hundred dues paying members. Even after E. F. Young Jr. died in 1950, his business establishments continued to serve Meridian’s African American community. Following Young’s death in 1950, family members continued to operate his various businesses. In 1953, his wife and three children renewed his patent for E. F. Young Manufacturing Co. Through the 1960s, the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel remained the only Meridian hotel to serve black patrons, and in a 1962 issue of Ebony Magazine, Young’s hotel was the only lodging listed in the state of Mississippi. As one of the only African-American hotels in the state, the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel welcomed a long list of distinguished guests, including Leontyne Price, Ella Fitzgerald, the Harlem Globetrotters, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The E. F. Young Jr. hotel remained in operation until 1978, when the building was rented to office tenants. In recent years it has lain entirely vacant. ©Rich Frishman ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
©Rich Frishman, E.F. YOUNG HOTEL; Meridian, Mississippi 2018 E. F. Young Jr.’s hotel was one of two listings of accommodations for black travelers in Mississippi under the years of segregation and Jim Crow laws, listed in Victor Green’s travel guide, The Green Book. E. F. Young Jr. was born in 1898 the son of a farmer and eventually became one of the wealthiest African American businessmen in the Southeast. He started as a barber as a young man, experience he used to formulate his own hair care products. On February 14, 1933, he registered the E. F. Young Jr. Manufacturing Company – the first ethnic hair care product manufacturer in the United States – with the U.S. Patent Office. It quickly became one of the largest African-American owned companies in the South. In 1946, Young realized his final goal in the establishment of his commercial empire. That year he opened his own barber and beauty shop, as well as the first and only Meridian hotel to serve African Americans. He called his new establishment the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel. Young had long been involved in the struggle for Civil Rights in Meridian. During the 1940s, he served as the Vice President of Meridian’s Chapter of the NAACP. By 1942, Young had helped recruit nearly one hundred dues paying members. Even after E. F. Young Jr. died in 1950, his business establishments continued to serve Meridian’s African American community. Following Young’s death in 1950, family members continued to operate his various businesses. In 1953, his wife and three children renewed his patent for E. F. Young Manufacturing Co. Through the 1960s, the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel remained the only Meridian hotel to serve black patrons, and in a 1962 issue of Ebony Magazine, Young’s hotel was the only lodging listed in the state of Mississippi. As one of the only African-American hotels in the state, the E. F. Young Jr. Hotel welcomed a long list of distinguished guests, including Leontyne Price, Ella Fitzgerald, the Harlem Globetrotters, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The E. F. Young Jr. hotel remained in operation until 1978, when the building was rented to office tenants. In recent years it has lain entirely vacant.
AFRICAN FREE SCHOOL; New York City 2018 The African Free School was founded on November 2, 1787 in Lower Manhattan by the New-York Manumission Society and founding fathers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. It was the very first school for blacks in America. Ultimately consisting of seven schools, the systemÕs third school was located in Greenwich Village, at 120 West 3rd Street, then known as Amity Street. The mission of the institution was to empower young black people and educate them for something other than slavery, which was a complicated and bold proposition for the time. In 1785 the Society worked to pass a New York State law prohibiting the sale of slaves imported into the state. This preceded the national law prohibiting slave trade, passed in 1808. The 1783 New York law also lessened restrictions on the manumission of enslaved Africans. In New York, a gradual emancipation law was passed in 1799, which provided that children of enslaved mothers would be born free. However, long periods of indentured servitude were required; 28 years for men and 25 for women. Existing slaves were eventually freed, until the last were freed in 1827. ©Rich Frishman ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
©Rich Frishman, AFRICAN FREE SCHOOL; New York City 2018 The African Free School was founded on November 2, 1787 in Lower Manhattan by the New-York Manumission Society and founding fathers Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. It was the very first school for blacks in America. Ultimately consisting of seven schools, the system’s third school was located in Greenwich Village, at 120 west 3rd Street, then known as Amity Street. The mission of the institution was to empower young black people and educate them for something other than slavery, which was a complicated and bold proposition for the time. In 1785 the Society worked to pass a New York State law prohibiting the sale of slaves imported into the state. This preceded the national law prohibiting slave trade, passed in 1808. The 1783 New York law also lessened restrictions on the manumission of enslaved Africans. In New York, a gradual emancipation law was passed in 1799, which provided that children of enslaved mothers would be born free. However, long periods of indentured servitude were required; 28 years for men and 25 for women. Existing slaves were eventually freed, until the last were freed in 1827.
Mammy's Cupboard; Natchez, Mississippi ©Rich Frishman ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
©Rich Frishman, Mammy’s Cupboard; Natchez, Mississippi Natchez businessman Henry Gaude built Mammy’s Cupboard in 1939 to attract visitors headed to the Natchez Pilgrimage, an elaborate tour of plantation homes that began in 1932. The twenty-eight-foot high building was constructed in the shape of a slave woman with hoop skirt—a mammy figure. She originally had earrings made from horseshoes and a serving tray in her hands, with white hair and a red head scarf that suggested maturity and modesty. The figure’s exaggerated black color, white circles under the eyes, and bright red rouge drew from minstrel makeup conventions and from standard racist imagery of blacks at the time.
Manzanar is most widely known as the site of one of ten American concentration camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated during World War II from December 1942 to 1945. Located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California's Owens Valley between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, it is approximately 230 miles (370 km) north of Los Angeles. Over 135 Japanese internees died during their incarceration at Manzanar. Their ashes were buried in this small cemetery outside the barbed wire perimeter. In 1943 some of the Japanese prisoners built this obelisk. The inscription translates as “Monument to comfort the souls of the dead.” The famous white obelisk, the Soul Consoling Tower, is one of the few remaining structures from the Manzanar concentration camp and the cemetery it marks is where the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage is held each year on the last Saturday in April.
©Rich Frishman, Monument to the Dead; Manzanar, California 2018 Manzanar is most widely known as the site of one of ten American concentration camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly incarcerated during World War II from December 1942 to 1945. Located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California’s Owens Valley between the towns of Lone Pine to the south and Independence to the north, it is approximately 230 miles (370 km) north of Los Angeles. Over 135 Japanese internees died during their incarceration at Manzanar. Their ashes were buried in this small cemetery outside the barbed wire perimeter. In 1943 some of the Japanese prisoners built this obelisk. The inscription translates as “Monument to comfort the souls of the dead.” The famous white obelisk, the Soul Consoling Tower, is the only remaining original structure from the Manzanar concentration camp and the cemetery it marks is where the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage is held each year on the last Saturday in April.
The enigmatic inscription “change,” floating above Chartres Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter, is often unnoticed. It is the vestige of the sign over the St. Louis Hotel Slave Exchange. The luxurious hotel included a bank, ballroom, shopping arcade and trading exchange. Six days each week from 1838-1862, under the hotel’s domed rotunda, auctioneers sold off land and goods as well as thousands of enslaved people. ©Rich Frishman ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
©Rich Frishman, Slave Exchange; New Orleans, Louisiana 2018 The enigmatic inscription “change,” floating above Chartres Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter, is often unnoticed. It is the vestige of the sign over the St. Louis Hotel Slave Exchange. The luxurious hotel included a bank, ballroom, shopping arcade and trading exchange. Six days each week from 1838-1862, under the hotel’s domed rotunda, auctioneers sold off land and goods as well as thousands of enslaved people.
During the Freedom Summer of 1964 three civil rights activists were jailed briefly in this small Neshoba County jail on trumped up charges. When Mickey Shwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were released that night, they were followed by Ku Klux Klan members tipped off by the sheriff's office. They were forced off the road en route to their office in Meridian, taken to a remote backroads location and bludgeoned. The following is excerpted from "The American Experience" of PBS: On June 21, 1964, three young men disappeared near the town of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Michael (Mickey) Schwerner and James Chaney worked for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in nearby Meridian; Andrew Goodman was one of the hundreds of college students from across the country who volunteered to work on voter registration, education, and Civil Rights as part of the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. The three men believed their work was necessary, but also dangerous: Ku Klux Klan membership in Mississippi was soaring in 1964 -- with membership reaching more than 10,000. The Klan was prepared to use violence to fight the Civil Rights movement; on April 24 the group offered a demonstration of its power, staging 61 simultaneous cross burnings throughout the state.Over the course of the summer of 1964, members of the Klan burned 20 black Mississippi churches. On June 16, Klan members targeted Neshoba County's Mt. Zion Baptist Church, where Schwerner had spent time working. Before burning the church, the Klan severely beat several people who had been attending a meeting there. Schwerner, however, was not there that day; he had gone to Oxford, Ohio, to train a group of Freedom Summer volunteers. Upon returning to Mississippi, Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney visited the charred remains of Mt. Zion. On the drive back to Meridian, their station wagon, known to law enforcement as a CORE vehicle, was stopped, and police arrested all three. Chaney, who had been driving, was charged with speeding, while Schwerner and Goodman were held for investigation. Neshoba County sheriffÕs deputy Cecil Price escorted them to the Philadelphia jail around 4pm.Andrew Goodman. Credit: Norris McNamara Despite the fact that the schedule of fines for speeding was posted on the wall, Price said the three men would have to remain in jail until the Justice of the Peace arrived to process the fine. Schwerner asked to make a phone call, but Price denied the request and left the jail. In Meridian, CORE staff began calling nearby jails and police stations, inquiring about the three men -- their standard procedure when organizers failed to return on time. Minnie Herring, the jailerÕs wife, claimed there was no phone call on June 21, but CORE records show a call to the Philadelphia jail around 5:30pm.Price returned a little after 10pm, collected ChaneyÕs speeding fine -- with no Justice of the Peace -- and told the three men to get out of the county. They were never seen alive again.In 1964, Mississippi was the only state without a central FBI office, but on June 22, agents from the New Orleans office arrived to begin a kidnapping investigation. (Since passing in 1932, the ÒLindbergh lawÓ brought kidnapping cases under federal jurisdiction.) More agents would come to Mississippi over the next several days, ultimately totaling more than 200.On June 23 investigators found the CORE station wagon, still smoldering from an attempt to destroy evidence; now the focus shifted from rescue to recovery of the menÕs bodies.The case was drawing national attention, in part because Schwerner and Goodman were both white Northerners. Mickey Schwerner's wife Rita, who was also a CORE worker, tried to convert that attention to the overlooked victims of racial violence. ÒThe slaying of a Negro in Mississippi is not news. It is only because my husband and Andrew Goodman were white that the national alarm has been sounded,Ó she told reporters during the search.Rita Schwerner. Credit: Steve Shapiro Throughout July, investigators combed the woods, fields, swamps, and rivers of Mississippi, ultimately finding the remains of eight African American men. Two were identified as Henry Dee and Charles Moore, college students who had been kidnapped, beaten, and murdered in May 1964. Another corpse was wearing a CORE t-shirt. Even less information was recorded about the five other bodies discovered.Finally, after six weeks of searching, a tip from an informant -- later identified as Mississippi Highway Patrol officer Maynard King -- sent investigators to an earthen dam on the Old JollyFarm outside Philadelphia. It was there that the FBI uncovered the bodies of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman on August 4.Throughout the fall of 1964, the FBI continued investigating the case. State and local law enforcement did not pursue it, claiming insufficient evidence. Because murder was a crime covered by state law, the federal government could not bring charges. Instead, on December 4, the Justice Department charged 21 men with conspiring to violate Schwerner, Chaney, and GoodmanÕs civil rights.Prosecutors brought the charges before a federal grand jury, which indicted 18 men in January 1965. The following month, presiding judge William Harold Cox dismissed the charges against the majority of the defendants, maintaining that the law applied only to law enforcement -- in this case, deputy sheriff Price, the county sheriff, and a patrolman. The prosecution appealed, and in 1966 the Supreme Court reinstated the charges, ruling that the law applied to both law enforcement officials and civilians.Cecil Price. Credit: FBI In February 1967 another federal grand jury indicted the men once again, and in October the trial began in Judge CoxÕs courtroom. Cox was known as a segregationist -- he had been the subject of an unsuccessful impeachment attempt after describing African American witnesses in an earlier case as Òchimpanzees.Ó But on the first day of the trial, when the defense attorney asked a witness whether Schwerner was part of a plot to rape white women during the summer of 1964, Cox called the question improper, stating, ÒIÕm not going to allow a farce to be made of this trial."Prosecutor John Doar later called CoxÕs response to the rape question a turning point in the fight for justice. ÒIf there had been any feeling in the courtroom that the defendants were invulnerable to conviction in Mississippi, this incident dispelled it completely," Doar said afterwards. "Cox made it clear he was taking the trial seriously. That made the jurors stop and think: ÔIf Judge Cox is taking this stand, weÕd better meet our responsibility as well.'"As the trial proceeded, the prosecution read the 1964 confessions of Horace Doyle Barnette and James Jordan, which described what happened on the night of June 21: After leaving Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the Philadelphia jail, Cecil Price contacted Edgar Ray Killen, one of the leaders of the local Ku Klux Klan, who was also a Baptist minister. Killen directed Klan members to gather in Philadelphia that evening. When two cars filled with Klansmen headed for the outskirts of Philadelphia, Price released the Civil Rights workers from jail and ordered them to head back to Meridian. He then joined the pursuit of the CORE station wagon.Catching up with the three Civil Rights workers on Highway 19, the Klansmen forced the men into their cars and drove all the vehicles to Rock Cut Road, a nearby side street. There, James Jordan shot Chaney, and Wayne Roberts shot Schwerner and Goodman. The killers loaded the bodies into the CORE station wagon and drove them to the Old Jolly Farm, where they used a bulldozer to bury the bodies in the earthen dam.The jury found seven of the defendants guilty: Price, Barnette, Roberts, James Arledge, Billy Wayne Posey, James Snowden, and Samuel Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of MississippiÕs White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. (Bowers had a particular antipathy toward Schwerner, and had begun planning his murder in the spring of 1964.) In three cases, the jury failed to reach a verdict; one juror refused to convict a minister, and Killen walked free. After unsuccessful appeals, the convicted men entered prison early in 1970. Each had received a sentence of between three and 10 years, but ultimately none would serve more than six years behind bars.In 1998, Jerry Mitchell, an investigative reporter for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, published excerpts from a 1984 interview with Samuel Bowers in which he spoke openly about the killings. ÒI was quite delighted to be convicted and have the main instigator of the entire affair walk out of the courtroom a free man, which everybody -- including the trial judge and the prosecutors and everybody else knows that that happened,Ó Bowers said. MitchellÕs reporting established that Bowers was referring to Killen. (The interview, which is now available to the public, was part of an oral history project to be held by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and sealed until BowersÕ death. Mitchell, whose work on unsolved cases of the Civil Rights era earned him a 2009 MacArthur fellowship, never revealed how he got access to the interview.)In 1999, Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore announced that the state would reopen the case. At his request, the FBI turned over more than 40,000 pages related to the initial investigation. In January 2005, a grand jury charged Edgar Ray Killen with murder. Although several of the other conspirators were still alive at the time, the grand jury did not find sufficient evidence to indict anyone else. The trial drew national news coverage; members of the victimsÕ families were present at the trial, some as witnesses and some as observers. Ultimately, the jury found insufficient evidence for a murder conviction, but did find Killen guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison. ©Rich Frishman ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
©Rich Frishman, Neshoba County Jail; Philadelphia, Mississippi 2018 During the Freedom Summer of 1964 three civil rights activists were jailed briefly in this small Neshoba County jail on trumped up charges. When Mickey Shwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney were released that night, they were followed by Ku Klux Klan members tipped off by the sheriff’s office. They were forced off the road en route to their office in Meridian, taken to a remote backroads location and murdered