William Pickens photograph collection

Abstract

The William Pickens Photograph Collection depicts some aspects of his personal life and his professional career as a writer, orator, an official for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.), and a United States Treasury Department official, from the 1920s to the 1940s. The collection consists of individual and group portraits and snapshots of Pickens; his wife, Minnie McAlpine Pickens; friends; and professional colleagues. Also depicted are portraits of baby contest winners; group portraits and views from conferences and meetings; and views from an ocean voyage. The collection contains no images from his early life or his career as an educator. The collection includes a portrait of Pickens with the three winners of the Dayton, Ohio, branch of the N.A.A.C.P. baby contest (1924); an undated studio portrait of Minnie McAlpine Pickens; views of Pickens and James Waldon Johnson in the office of The Crisis Magazine (ca. 1920s); a group portrait of Pickens and participants at "William Pickin's [sic] Day," sponsored by the Enon Ridge Civic League, Birmingham, Alabama (1932); Pickens, with a group of colleagues, posing with a truck to solicit aid for the American Relief Ship to the Spanish Republic (ca. late 1930s); Pickens and co-workers from around the period he was working for the U.S. Treasury Department (ca. 1940s); and a group portrait of Pickens with students and faculty of A & I (Agricultural and Industrial) State College (now Tennessee State University), in Nashville, who have purchased defense bonds (early 1940s). Also depicted are views from an undated ocean voyage on the R.M.S. Queen Mary; a group of studio portraits of friends and aquaintances, including child piano prodigy Philippa Schuyler and Annie Nathan Meyer, senior trustee and founder of Barnard College, New York; two posters, bearing Williams' image but no dates or specific information, that were probably used to publicize his speaking engagements; and a group of snapshots, portraits and photo greeting cards depicting some of Pickens' European friends (mostly German) and their families and homes (ca. 1920s-1940s). Another group of images consists of studio portraits of infants and young children who were baby contest winners, sponsored by local branches of the N.A.A.C.P., that were subsequently published in The Crisis Magazine (ca. 1920s).

Dates / Origin

Date created: 1925

Library locations

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Photographs and Prints Division

Shelf locator: Sc Photo William Pickens Collection