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Photo essay

A photo essay is a form of visual storytelling that develops a narrative across a series of photographs . It originated during the late 1920s in German illustrated journals, initially presenting stories in the objective, distanced tone of news reporting. The photo essay gained wide popularity with the growth of photographically illustrated magazines such as VU (launched in Paris in 1928), LIFE (launched in New York in 1936), and Picture Post (launched in London in 1938). It is associated especially closely with LIFE , where the photo essay became a platform not only for informing readers, but for influencing their opinions. Through the middle decades of the 20th century, this visual format would be used to familiarize audiences with the transformations of a modernizing world, entertain them with slice-of-life stories, and introduce them to unfamiliar members of their society.

4 works online

Gordon Parks Red Jackson, Harlem Gang Leader 1948

Erich Salomon Hotel Excelsior in Rome 1931

Margaret Bourke-White Fort Peck Dam, Montana 1936

W. Eugene Smith Dr. Ceriani 1948

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Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

New vision photography.

László Moholy-Nagy

Lucia Moholy

High School Student

August Sander

Pine Trees in Pushkin Park

Alexander Rodchenko

[Charleston on the Bauhaus Roof]

T. Lux Feininger

Small Harbor, Marseilles

Herbert Bayer

Albert Renger-Patzsch

Roger Parry

Scandinavia

Department of Photographs , The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

The explosive development of photography as a medium of untold expressive power and as a primary vehicle of modern consciousness occurred during the two decades immediately following the Great War. In the aftermath of this first totally mechanized conflict, avant-garde artists, commercial illustrators, and journalists turned to photography as if seeking to discover through its mechanisms and materials something of the soul of contemporary industrial society.

Photography’s long-acknowledged power to mirror the face of the world was by no means abandoned, but in the 1920s and ’30s a host of unconventional forms and techniques suddenly flourished. Abstract photograms, photomontages composed of fragmented images, the combination of photographs with modern typography and graphic design in posters and magazine pages—all were facets of what artist and theorist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) enthusiastically described as a “new vision” rooted in the technological culture of the twentieth century.

An influential teacher at the Bauhaus in Germany, Moholy-Nagy championed unexpected vantage points and playful printing techniques to engender a fresh rapport with the visible world ( 1987.1100.499 ). Other photographers in Germany, such as August Sander (1876–1964) ( 1987.1100.82 ) and Albert Renger-Patzsch (1897–1966) ( 2005.100.147 ), emphasized a rigorous objectivity grounded in the close observation of detail. And with the advent of the 35mm camera in the early 1930s, photojournalism and street photography became possessed of a new grace, deftness, and mobility.

In France, Surrealism was the gravitational center for avant-garde photography between the wars. Launched in 1924 by the poet André Breton, the Surrealist movement aimed at the psychic and social transformation of the individual through the replacing of bourgeois conventions with new values of spiritual adventure, poetry, and eroticism. Essentially a philosophical and literary movement, Surrealism was greatly indebted to the techniques of psychoanalysis, and Freud’s research into free association and dream imagery. Surrealist photographers made use of such techniques as double exposure, combination printing, and reversed tonality ( 1987.1100.81 ) to evoke the union of dream and reality.

In Russia, the Revolution of 1917 imposed transformation through a reordered society. It enlisted the enthusiastic participation of artists like El Lissitzky (1890–1941) and Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956), who saw in photography the most efficient way to express the dynamic reshaping of their country. In their photographs, they used a repertoire of defamiliarizing devices—extreme up and down angles ( 1987.1100.5 ), tilted horizons, fragmentary close-ups, abstracted forms—as part of an attempt to break old habits of perception and visual representation.

The late 1920s saw a series of international exhibitions devoted to New Vision photography. The most significant of these was Film und Foto , an exhibition held in Stuttgart, Germany, in May–July 1929, which included approximately 1,000 works from Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

The rise of Stalinism and Fascism in the 1930s would disillusion and silence many of the photographers associated with the new vision. By turns euphoric and despairing, prey to utopian optimism or deep spiritual disarray, the short period between the two world wars remains one of the richest in photographic history.

Department of Photographs. “New Vision Photography.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/nvis/hd_nvis.htm (October 2004)

Further Reading

Hambourg, Maria Morris, and Christopher Phillips. The New Vision: Photography Between the World Wars . New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. See on MetPublications

Moholy-Nagy, László. Painting, Photography, Film . Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987.

Additional Essays by Department of Photographs

• Department of Photographs. “ Photography and the Civil War, 1861–65 .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Early Photographers of the American West: 1860s–70s .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Eugène Atget (1857–1927) .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Photography and Surrealism .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Thomas Eakins (1844–1916): Photography, 1880s–90s .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Walker Evans (1903–1975) .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Early Documentary Photography .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Photography at the Bauhaus .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ The Daguerreian Era and Early American Photography on Paper, 1839–60 .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Paul Strand (1890–1976) .” (October 2004)
• Department of Photographs. “ Photojournalism and the Picture Press in Germany .” (October 2004)

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• Early Documentary Photography
• Edward J. Steichen (1879–1973): The Photo-Secession Years
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8 Ways ‘The Great Gatsby’ Captured the Roaring Twenties—and Its Dark Side

By: Sarah Pruitt

Published: November 16, 2018

More than any other author, F. Scott Fitzgerald can be said to have captured the rollicking, tumultuous decade known as the Roaring Twenties , from its wild parties, dancing and illegal drinking to its post-war prosperity and its new freedoms for women.

Above all, Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby has been hailed as the quintessential portrait of Jazz Age America, inspiring Hollywood adaptations populated by dashing bootleggers and glamorous flappers in short, fringed dresses.

But amid that decade of newfound prosperity and economic growth, Fitzgerald—like other writers of the so-called “Lost Generation”—wondered if America had lost its moral compass in the rush to embrace post-war materialism and consumer culture. While The Great Gatsby captures the exuberance of the 1920s, it’s ultimately a portrayal of the darker side of the era, and a pointed criticism of the corruption and immorality lurking beneath the glitz and glamour.

Why the Roaring Twenties Left Many Americans Poorer

For some, the Great Depression began in the 1920s.

The Shady, Get‑Rich Scams of the Roaring Twenties

As Americans dreamed of amassing fabulous fortunes, many became vulnerable to cons.

How Flappers of the Roaring Twenties Redefined Womanhood

Young women with short hairstyles, cigarettes dangling from their painted lips, dancing to a live jazz band, explored new‑found freedoms.

World War I echoes in the 1920s.

Set in 1922, four years after the end of the Great War , as it was then known, Fitzgerald’s novel reflects the ways in which that conflict had transformed American society. The war left Europe devastated and marked the emergence of the United States as the preeminent power in the world. From 1920 to 1929, America enjoyed an economic boom , with a steady rise in income levels, business growth, construction and trading on the stock market.

In The Great Gatsby, both Nick Carraway, the narrator, and Jay Gatsby himself are veterans of World War I, and it is Gatsby’s war service that kicks off his rise from a “Mr. Nobody from Nowhere” (in the words of his romantic rival, Tom Buchanan) to the fabulously wealthy owner of a mansion on West Egg, Long Island.

Speakeasies flourished when Prohibition failed.

Beginning in early 1920, the U.S. government began enforcing the 18th Amendment , which banned the sale and manufacture of “intoxicating liquors.” But banning alcohol didn’t stop people from drinking; instead, speakeasies and other illegal drinking establishments flourished, and people like the Fitzgeralds made “bathtub gin” to fuel their liquor-soaked parties.

“The whole plot [of The Great Gatsby ] is really driven by Prohibition in an important way,” says Sarah Churchwell, professor of humanities at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study and author of Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby (2014). “The only way in which Jay Gatsby becomes wealthy overnight is because Prohibition created a black market,” allowing bootleggers like Gatsby and his partners to amass staggering quantities of money in a short time.

Prohibition creates a ‘new money’ class.

As their wealth grew, many Americans of the 1920s broke down the traditional barriers of society. This, in turn, provoked anxiety among upper-class plutocrats (represented in the novel by Tom Buchanan). In The Great Gatsby, Prohibition finances Gatsby’s rise to a new social status, where he can court his lost love, Daisy Buchanan, whose voice (as Gatsby famously tells Nick in the novel) is “full of money.”

“One of the many unintended consequences of Prohibition was that it created this accelerated upward social mobility,” Churchwell explains. “Fitzgerald is reflecting a preoccupation at the time that there were these upstart—as they would have said—these nouveau riche people who came from dubious backgrounds and then suddenly had all this money that they were splashing around.”

The flapper was emerging.

By 1925, when Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby , flappers were out in full force, complete with bobbed hair, shorter skirts and cigarettes dangling from their mouths as they danced the Charleston. But while later Hollywood versions of Gatsby channeled flapper style, the novel itself actually captures a comparatively conservative moment, as 1922 could be considered closer to 1918 than to the heyday of the Roaring Twenties later in the decade. For one thing, the Charleston didn’t even emerge until 1923. Also, Churchwell says, “skirts in the novel are a lot longer than we think they are. We all picture them in knee-length dresses. But dresses in 1922 were ankle-length .”

Jordan Baker, the novel’s most liberated female character, pushes against some of the restrictions still constraining women by the early ‘20s: She’s athletic, single and goes out with various men. “But her society is by no means welcoming that with open arms, and she's getting pushback,” Churchwell says, noting that Tom and Daisy Buchanan, as well as Jordan’s aunt, all voice disapproval of her behavior. “As with Gatsby, and his dark path to upward social mobility, the novel is charting a cultural moment that was anxious about women's new emancipation as much as it was celebrating it.”

The novel depicts decay beneath decadence.

Just as Gatsby’s shifty business partner, Meyer Wolfsheim, was based on the real-life New York gangster Arnold Rothstein, widely believe to have fixed the 1919 World Series, the growing crime and corruption of the Prohibition era is strongly reflected in The Great Gatsby . In Churchwell’s book, she resurrects a real-life crime that made headlines in 1922—the double murder of an adulterous couple in New Jersey—and uses it to explore the background against which Fitzgerald composed his famous novel.

“It typifies a certain kind of story about the dark underbelly of the Jazz Age that is very present in [ The Great Gatsby ],” she says of the murder of Rev. Edward Hall, a pastor, and Eleanor Mills, a singer in his church’s choir . “It's about adultery, it's about people who make up romantic pasts, and it's about the sordidness of it all, the tawdriness of it all and the kind of dark griminess of it.”

New consumer culture leads to a rise in advertising.

Though not all Americans were rich, many more people than before had money to spend. And there were more and more consumer goods to spend it on, from automobiles to radios to cosmetics to household appliances like vacuums and washing machines. With the arrival of new goods and technologies came a new consumer culture driven by marketing and advertising, which Fitzgerald took care to include, and implicitly criticize, in The Great Gatsby .

“There’s this idea that America is worshipping businesses, it's worshipping advertising,” Churchwell says. In one memorable example, the cuckolded George Wilson believes the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg, a figure that appears on a giant billboard above the road, are those of God.

The age of the automobile is reflected in Gatsby’s downfall.

Cars had been invented early in the 20th century, but they became ubiquitous in the 1920s, as lower prices and the advent of consumer credit enabled more and more Americans to buy their own. The liberating (and destructive) potential of the automobile is clear in The Great Gatsby , as Gatsby’s flashy, expensive car becomes the source of his downfall.

The novel predicts doom ahead.

Gatsby’s dreams of winning Daisy for himself end in failure, just as America’s era of prosperity would come to a screeching halt with the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression . By 1930, 4 million Americans were unemployed; that number would reach 15 million by 1933, the Depression’s lowest point.

By 1924, when Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby , he seems to have already foreseen the lasting consequences of America’s heady romance with capitalism and materialism. Through his novel, Fitzgerald foreshadows the inevitability that the decadence of the 1920s—what he would later call “the most expensive orgy in history” would end in disappointment and disillusionment.

“This novel is really a snapshot of a moment when in Fitzgerald's view, America had hit a point of no return,” Churchwell says. “It was losing its ideals rapidly, and he's capturing the moment when America was turning towards the country that we've inherited.” 

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Home > Open Access Journals > TAMPABAYHISTORY > Vol. 2 (1980) > Iss. 2

The Roaring Twenties: A Photo Essay

Tampa Bay History

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The Roaring Twenties: Into the Past

By Mark Asch

Feb 27, 2024

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T he New York City of Raoul Walsh’s childhood was a place where giants walked the earth—and came to dinner. In his riotously unreliable 1974 autobiography, Each Man in His Time, the director recalls his father, Thomas Walsh, as an Irish subversive who shot his way out of Dublin, escaping on a ship bound for Spain and ending up in New York as a cutter for Brooks Brothers, where he dressed Edwin Booth for Hamlet and Teddy Roosevelt for San Juan Hill. Through his father, young Raoul allegedly brushed up against the greats—Mark Twain, Enrico Caruso, Buffalo Bill, Gentleman Jim, John L. Sullivan—some of whom would later populate his films. After his father died in 1937, Walsh writes, his hometown “was just another city without Big Tom.” But soon enough he would recreate the city of his memories on the “New York Street” of the Warner Bros. backlot.

That film—his first for the studio—was The Roaring Twenties, an epoch-spanning tall tale filled with the kind of composite characters and legendary incidents found in Walsh’s recollections. The director, who had spent some of his early years as a merchant seaman and a cowboy, had been making movies since the silent era, and this project would rejuvenate his career, earning him a reputation as one of the signature action filmmakers of midcentury Hollywood. Vital in its telling and foreordained in its unfolding, it is an elegy for a time and place, and for the genre most heavily associated with its milieu—with the mingling of sensational alarmism, shocked conscience, and sexualized fascination that the crime and energy of cities like New York provoke. Released in 1939, a year often considered the high-water mark of classic Hollywood, The Roaring Twenties shares with several films of its moment a sense of recapitulating one of the studio system’s key genres. Like Stagecoach and Gunga Din, it takes an action template and elevates it to the status of myth. Following a hood whose fortunes rise and fall over the course of the Prohibition era, Walsh’s film traces a familiar genre arc that in 1939 already seemed like a marker of a very specific bygone moment in American cinema—the period between the verbal freedom of the early years of talking pictures and the behavioral restrictions ushered in by the Production Code.

With The Roaring Twenties, Walsh closed out a run of films he had all but inaugurated with his 1915 silent landmark Regeneration, arguably the first major movie in the gangster cycle that also includes Cagney’s defining star turn in The Public Enemy (1931). Walsh also drew from the bawdy, larger-than-life energy of his previous New York films, like The Bowery (1933), with its beaded anecdotes of dance-hall girls, bare-knuckle bouts, and Steve Brodie’s leap off the Brooklyn Bridge. Walsh enlarges that film’s already jostling and expansive urban canvas by pouring as much recent American history as he possibly can into The Roaring Twenties, with exposition that rolls back the years to the end of the First World War, before working its way to the doorstep of the Second. An opening montage, as well as transitional sequences throughout the film, recounts the highlights of a crazed age with a dizzying array of textures and techniques: stock footage, B-roll, expressionist process shots, canted angles, propulsive cutting, and an urgent, stentorian voice-over evoking the vernacular of the newsreel.

The film’s appeal to common memory and its feel for how mass media metabolizes and codifies American life bear the influence of Mark Hellinger, the onetime New York City newspaper columnist who wrote “The World Moves On,” the story on which The Roaring Twenties is based. Today, Hellinger is best known for the location-shot postwar noir The Naked City (1948), which he produced and narrated, in a hard-boiled patois synthesizing bracing, tawdry neorealism with tabloid hokum—local news packaged for national syndication. Hellinger was the rare East Coast newspaperman who came to Hollywood not as a writer but as an executive, at least after a fashion: “No one was sure what he actually did” at Warner Bros., according to Walsh biographer Marilyn Ann Moss. Hellinger would eventually carve out a creative-producer role at the studio, and something of the impresario comes through in The Roaring Twenties, particularly in the hucksterish spin he puts on his own (purported) encounters with smugglers, singers, and speakeasies, and in the film’s mix of sharp-shouldered Noo Yawk authenticity and star-spangled Hollywood artifice.

To Hellinger, The Roaring Twenties was “a memory.” He calls it that in his preamble to the film, text that unfurls in an opening-credits scrawl scored to an overture borrowing melodies from popular songs of the recent past, like “I’m Just Wild About Harry” and “My Melancholy Baby,” that play key roles in the narrative and put the audience in a reflective mood. The action proper begins somewhere on the western front, where native New Yorkers Eddie (James Cagney), George (Humphrey Bogart), and Lloyd (Jeffrey Lynn) all tumble into the same trench. The intensity of wartime experience draws out compressed, efficient characterizations that represent a cross section of the gangster movie’s moral universe and the manly bonds that govern it. Blue-blooded lawyer Lloyd, eventually a rumrunner’s reluctant mouthpiece, is introduced as a Goody Two-shoes, and his prissy rectitude underscores the hypocrisies of the straight world, once the story jumps ahead to the Prohibition era; George, an out-and-out psychopath who feels no guilt upon learning that he has shot his last German after the armistice has been signed, is a disloyal snake who comes to represent the venality of the underworld. Where Lloyd and George are flat characters, Eddie becomes the audience’s figure of identification because of his dynamism, as he navigates the upside-down world of the Prohibition era with opportunism and decisiveness. He starts out as a teetotaling innocent—the type of hard-luck Great War vet memorialized earlier in the thirties by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “forgotten man” speech and films like I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and Heroes for Sale —before a stroke of fate throws him into the bootlegging racket, offering him scope for his ambition.

Like Lloyd and George, the women of the film represent the dual poles of Eddie’s world. His wartime pen pal, Jean Sherman (Priscilla Lane), enters the movie skipping, inspiring some insinuating wisecracks. But once she has grown into the kind of classy adult girl who still plays with dolls, she becomes Eddie’s aspirational love object, and he secures her a gig singing at a nightclub modeled after the El Fey in Manhattan, where another Warner Bros. gangster, George Raft, was once a tap dancer. The club’s hostess, Panama Smith (Gladys George), is also Eddie’s business partner, and she rags him for his schoolkid crush in a tough-broad manner, betraying a love that is half romantic, half maternal (foreshadowing the openly Oedipal relationship at the center of Cagney and Walsh’s next collaboration, White Heat, ten years later).

The film hits what were, even at the time, all the traditional stops on a Hollywood antihero’s journey, but Walsh relates every old chestnut with extra spice. Filling each sequence with stock characters and local color, he makes the city a place of constant movement and incident, paced to the rat-a-tat of tommy-gun battles and snappy dialogue. Beyond Hellinger and credited screenwriters Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay, and Robert Rossen, more than half a dozen writers worked on the film—including Frank McHugh, Cagney’s real-life buddy and frequent script doctor, who plays Eddie’s sidekick Danny in the film—and each one probably got in a few of the one-liners and callbacks that close practically every scene, as if inviting a roar of laughter and shouts for another round of drinks. A kind of living museum of gangster movies of the early thirties, The Roaring Twenties also, through sheer force of personality, crystallizes the characters and conflicts that would become the framework of many gangster movies that followed, including those from the Black-crime-film booms of the seventies and nineties, and especially films by its professed admirer Martin Scorsese. The dolly shot taking in Eddie’s operation, which scrolls past the associates cooking the ethanol off the moonshine they sell as scotch and carbonating the sham champagne, could be an early prototype for the famous Copacabana tracking shot in Goodfellas. It’s a running gag that Eddie puts bad booze over on his clients at a high markup—he’s streetwise, and so, by extension, is the audience that laughs with him.

Cagney and Bogart are two exemplars of the type that film scholar Robert Sklar calls “city boys”: actors who emerged from the melting pot of the early-twentieth-century metropolis, and whose white-ethnic, tough-minded affect spoke to the realities of poverty as well as to the dynamism of the bustling underclass. Warner Bros.’ reputation as the most populist studio of Hollywood’s golden age comes down to its association with the gangster-movie genre and the city-boy actors who were its stars.

By 1939, the careers of both Cagney and Bogart were in transition. Cagney, dissatisfied with Warner Bros.’ handling of his career and bored with his screen persona, was soon to strike out on his own as an independent star-producer. Bogart would work with much of the Roaring Twenties unit again on Walsh’s They Drive by Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941), building up to his leading-man status in John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (also 1941). The laconic cynicism he exudes in The Roaring Twenties would, by the time of Casablanca (1942), read as ironically patriotic: the sleepy smirk of a scrappy warrior with no illusions but plenty of underdog spirit. In the noir films that followed the end of the war, it would read still differently, expressing a disaffection that was not sociological, as in the gangster movies, but psychological and existential.

Each man in his time, right? If The Roaring Twenties signals the effective end of the type of cinema that he once personified, then Cagney, in one of his greatest showcases, goes down literally swinging. His walk is herky-jerky, with his shoulders pulled back, and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other while trying to stand still; he never quite knows what to do with his hands. When Eddie is angry, Cagney cocks his balled little fist, draws it back as if thinking with his body, considering, and either expresses his energy through a punch or shakes out his hand and finds a different outlet. He laughs at other people’s jokes and runs through multiple moods in a single shot, eyes always darting and assessing, mouth setting and resetting. When Eddie approaches a grown-up Jean, now a vaudeville chorine rushing around backstage, we’re with Cagney through every beat of the interaction: his wink, his bright-eyed pickup lines, his crumpled rejection, his scabbed-over resolve and promise to come back tomorrow. Within the activity of Walsh’s frame, quicksilver Cagney embodies the busyness of the city itself.

In Each Man in His Time, Walsh boasts of being arrested after shooting Regeneration ’s ferry-fire sequence, and of fixing the footage to erase views up the skirts of “hooligan” extras dressed as women. But he also recalls building to a tearjerking climax that hinges on a simple close-up—a technique he credits to D. W. Griffith, for whom he played Edwin Booth’s younger brother, John Wilkes, in The Birth of a Nation. The Roaring Twenties is pierced by similar startling irruptions of feeling. The overlapping love triangles in the film—Lloyd-Jean-Eddie, Jean-Eddie-Panama—are hardly equilateral, and Walsh uses close-ups to strip away romantic illusions, resulting in a fatalism that, in its sincerity and the primal film grammar used to convey it, is its own kind of romanticism. In the moment when Eddie gives up his love of Jean, Walsh cuts from a profile two-shot to a close-up of Cagney, a full ninety-degree pivot punctuated emphatically by the left-to-right and right-to-left side dollies following Eddie along the sidewalk before and after, making parentheses around his moment of reckoning.

At the end of the film, on the eve of the wet new year of 1934, the old bootlegger Eddie and the old showgirl Panama have found each other at the bottom of the glass. (With their past-their-prime sloppy tenderness and skid-row holiday plans, they could be the Irish couple of the Pogues’ “Fairytale of New York,” the most Walshian of Christmas songs.) Prohibition is over, and Eddie acknowledges, with a self-mythologizing melancholy, that the world, per Hellinger’s original title, has moved on from guys like him. Indeed, it is hearing the melody of “My Melancholy Baby,” Jean’s signature tune, that sparks this realization, stopping him in his tracks and motivating his actions at the climax. The “memory” that is The Roaring Twenties hinges on another memory, a popular song.

Eddie’s nostalgia and the film’s are one and the same. The gangster movies of the early thirties were ripped from the headlines, while those of the second half of the twentieth century and beyond are self-aware about the genre’s history. The pivot point is The Roaring Twenties. Those later touchstones take up a mantle of retrospection first shouldered by the aging city boy Cagney in the final moments of Walsh’s film, which trace Eddie’s journey back into the past and lay an archetype to rest.

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Each decade brings something different for society and government. The Roaring Twenties depicts rapid economic improvement and social change perceived as the Jazz decade due to the dynamism of art since the return to peaceful life after the First World War. The decade started with a roar and finished with a crash, bringing many significant changes to the world. Women wanted improved rights, which led to the 19th Amendment, while the United States’ wealth doubled from 1920-1929. Culture and technology advanced, and it was only the beginning. It’s very seldom that the United States has a decade that is unique as the Roaring Twenties with its mass consumerism, Prohibition laws, the Harlem Renaissance, and the development of jazz.

The 1920s started with the habits of daily life that were altered when the soldiers returned home after the First World War. The government ensured the life safety of its citizens after their traumas caused by the war. Hence, after such an experience, Congress starts to make amendments to the US Constitution to change people’s lifestyles. The 1920s was known as the Era of Prohibition of alcoholic beverages due to the Eighteenth Amendment (The Roaring Twenties). Alcohol was banned from being sold, manufactured, and transported to everyone. This was because people believed that banning alcohol prevented domestic violence and child abandonment. However, that did not stop everyone from drinking or buying alcohol since they found other purchasing ways (The Roaring Twenties). It gave rise to speakeasies, places where liquor was sold criminally. Thus, the 18th Amendment prevented alcohol consumption for some people, while others had to trade underground. The only distinctive feature of the American dining table of the 1920s was the absence of alcohol.

Although the governmental regulations made the Roaring 20s exceptional with the prohibition of alcohol, the food at that time could not be distinguished as something exceptional. The United States needed to supply the soldiers with nourishing food during the First World War. That is why the political situation forced its governmental policies on steady domestic prices fitting into consumption standards (Zeitz). Shortly after the war, America was concerned with feeding refugees. However, in the age of consumerism, citizens were preparing sandwiches and meals similar to modern dishes but less spicy.

The most promising change in society was the freedom to vote for women for the first time in history. It set the beginning of a feminist mindset of females who wanted to be equally responsible for their life choices as their male counterparts were. It happened due to the Nineteenth Amendment, which allowed women to vote for independent lives and education for their children (Zeitz). No wonder flappers, fashionable women with conventional behavior standards such as drinking and smoking, symbolize more free women than ever before (The Roaring Twenties). Although it was not the reality for many females who had no courage to dress up openly and do unladylike things, it was the beginning of changes in gender perceptions.

As women gained more power in society, the family structure started to change. During the decade, females could use birth control tools that significantly decreased the number of children in a family from seven to three (Zeitz). Moreover, the new image of a woman destroyed many taboos and stereotypes about family values. For instance, females in the 1920s lost their virginity before marriage, which was inappropriate in the previous decades. This is how women’s role created a new family model standing out from the traditional one with its new morals and standards.

The changes in house preferences characterized the decade. It was a time of cultural conflicts because of sharp demographic shifts, as Americans preferred living in cities over farms (The Roaring Twenties). However, farm prices have hit bottom, increasing the gap between prosperous cities and impoverished farms. The point connecting female rights and housing is that one-third of all woman workers started living alone in apartments and boarding houses without adult supervision (Zeitz). Hence, city-dwellers and small-town residents, representatives of the new woman trend, and advocates of old-fashioned family structures battled each other’s values.

The Roaring 20s significantly changed African American culture, forming the Harlem Renaissance. At the beginning of the 1900s, black families started moving to Harlem despite fights with some white residents, which caused the Great Migration from the South to the North during the 1920s (Harlem Renaissance). The movement of an exceptional leader, W.E.B Du Bois, made the African American culture prosper with the first breakthrough of McKay’s Harlem Shadows. Du Bois inspired Jessie Redmon Fauset to write the novel “ There is Confusion,” which described Black Americans who found their cultural identities in Manhattan with the massive population of white people (Harlem Renaissance). The cultural and artistic developments continued with people who enjoyed music, and Louis Armstrong performed songs with the trumpet. Thus, the 1920s allowed African American culture to prosper in the Harlem neighborhood.

The central distinguishing point of the Roaring 20s is the blossoming economy that changed people’s daily lives by providing more jobs and higher wages and demolishing many financial constraints. “The nation’s total wealth more than doubled between 1920 and 1929” justifies that Americans became a consumer culture with better economic backgrounds (The Roaring Twenties). The reason is that technological progress has caused better production, cities’ electrification, and marketing development. Moreover, this decade gave rise to credit, as almost three-quarters of all furniture was brought on credit (Zeitz). The 1920s economy developed advertising and created many brand profiles due to the proliferation of publishing, music, and cinematography. Thus, people were exposed to advertisements, developing supply and demand theories, and the country’s economies.

Many Americans of the 1920s started to innovate their houses due to better financial situations and technological advances. When the US started manufacturing products like automobiles and radios, the prices lowered for citizens, making them available and affordable for middle-class families. Almost two-thirds of all households had electricity in five years, providing middle-class homes with electric refrigerators, freezers, and washing machines (Zeitz). The US’s technological and strategic advances in aviation set the beginning of commercial passenger air travel. Furthermore, the “increased productivity by 72 percent in manufacturing, 33 percent in railroads, and 41 percent in mining” enhanced the financial situation of many families (Zeitz). Such changes in manufacturing gave people higher wages and extra money to spend on new technologies.

The Roaring 20s was the time for the booming industry to produce more consumer items and continue creating new technologies. One of the indicators of the Roaring 20s was the radio because people brought it for entertainment and political purposes. After the first commercially licensed radio podcast in November of 1922 in Pennsylvania, the radio turned into a source of news, comedy shows, and music (Zeitz). The wide distribution of radios increased by more than 12 million houses listening to the stations daily. Everyone who wanted to stay in touch with their friends and family brought a telephone, and those who wanted to follow current affairs had a radio.

The job market altered during the decade. Initially, people participated in the Second World War by becoming soldiers, nurses, or factory workers before the 1920s. After the war’s end, people had a broader range of workplaces as the manufacturers formed more factories with higher employee demand. Even more, than this, women had blue-collar jobs with hard manual labor, such as agriculture and manufacturing (The Roaring 20s). The most exciting fact is that women were employed as stenographers in white-collar jobs. It demonstrates the change in the workplace because women were not allowed to work as clerical workers. Although “the work week of the urban blue-collar worker fell from 55.9 hours in 1900 to 44.2 in 1929,” their “wages rose by 25 percent” (Zeitz). For employers, the most critical part was ensuring the business organization provided steady employment at a fair pay rate. It means that people had better working environments and conditions set by employers.

People with more free time from their jobs amused themselves by visiting movie theaters, dance halls, and fun parks. The movie theaters showed many famous Hollywood movies with Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, and Tallulah Bankhead (The Roaring Twenties). Mickey Mouse, still a famous cartoon character, first appeared on the screens during the Roaring 20s. The first successful talking picture was The Jazz Singer of 1927, compared to the silent films shot before (Zeitz). On average, three-quarters of the population visited these movies every week. Apart from movies, Americans found other hobbies during the Jazz Age. (Zeitz). Their favorite dances were the Charleston, the cakewalk, the black bottom, and the flea hop. The Roaring 20s brought many famous artists to the scene, giving many entertainment activities for Americans.

During the beginning of the 1920s, Warren Harding, the 29th President of the United States, ruled the country to what one would consider normalcy compared to his predecessor Woodrow Wilson. Harding had the best quality of any politician, the ability to please everyone. He had many talents: he played the trumpet, published newspapers, and succeeded in public speaking. When Harding’s successor, Calvin Coolidge, came to the White House, he never interfered with the politics of the Jazz Age. He believed that the President should regulate public office but not the culture. The most reticent President contributed to the Roaring 20s by slicing the estate tax and federal surtax. Thus, Coolidge’s absolute faith in market forces made the 1920s prosper in business and commerce.

American Industry grew significantly during the Roaring 20s, giving consumers chances to buy household technologies at lowered prices. The era of consumerism led to the Prohibition laws restricting alcoholic beverages. Women who first received voting right changed the family structure and the US demographics. Moreover, Harlem Renaissance and Jazz became alternative names for the 1920s because African Americans developed culture and talents after the Great Migration. The US’s creativity and talents made it the leading state in the world that exported its novelty to other countries during the 1920s.

Works Cited

“Harlem Renaissance.” history.com , 2009, Web.

“The Roaring Twenties.” history.com , A&E Television Networks, Web.

Zeitz, Joshua. “The Roaring Twenties.” ap.gilderlehrman.org/ , 2019.

• Is the United States an Empire?
• World War II and the US Decision to Stay Out
• The Culture Wars in the United States of America
• Pompeii Before the Eruption
• The Great Gatsby
• American Progressive History and Charles Beard
• “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” by Turner
• The Making of Modern America
• Missouri Compromise, Compromise of 1850, and Kansas-Nebraska Act
• Industrialization in the United States
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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How to Create an Engaging Photo Essay (with Examples)

Photo essays tell a story in pictures. They're a great way to improve at photography and story-telling skills at once. Learn how to do create a great one.

Learn | Photography Guides | By Ana Mireles

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Photography is a medium used to tell stories – sometimes they are told in one picture, sometimes you need a whole series. Those series can be photo essays.

If you’ve never done a photo essay before, or you’re simply struggling to find your next project, this article will be of help. I’ll be showing you what a photo essay is and how to go about doing one.

You’ll also find plenty of photo essay ideas and some famous photo essay examples from recent times that will serve you as inspiration.

If you’re ready to get started, let’s jump right in!

Table of Contents

What is a Photo Essay?

A photo essay is a series of images that share an overarching theme as well as a visual and technical coherence to tell a story. Some people refer to a photo essay as a photo series or a photo story – this often happens in photography competitions.

Photographic history is full of famous photo essays. Think about The Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Like Brother Like Sister by Wolfgang Tillmans, Gandhi’s funeral by Henri Cartier Bresson, amongst others.

What are the types of photo essay?

Despite popular belief, the type of photo essay doesn’t depend on the type of photography that you do – in other words, journalism, documentary, fine art, or any other photographic genre is not a type of photo essay.

Instead, there are two main types of photo essays: narrative and thematic .

As you have probably already guessed, the thematic one presents images pulled together by a topic – for example, global warming. The images can be about animals and nature as well as natural disasters devastating cities. They can happen all over the world or in the same location, and they can be captured in different moments in time – there’s a lot of flexibility.

A narrative photo essa y, on the other hand, tells the story of a character (human or not), portraying a place or an event. For example, a narrative photo essay on coffee would document the process from the planting and harvesting – to the roasting and grinding until it reaches your morning cup.

What are some of the key elements of a photo essay?

• Tell a unique story – A unique story doesn’t mean that you have to photograph something that nobody has done before – that would be almost impossible! It means that you should consider what you’re bringing to the table on a particular topic.
• Put yourself into the work – One of the best ways to make a compelling photo essay is by adding your point of view, which can only be done with your life experiences and the way you see the world.
• Add depth to the concept – The best photo essays are the ones that go past the obvious and dig deeper in the story, going behind the scenes, or examining a day in the life of the subject matter – that’s what pulls in the spectator.
• Nail the technique – Even if the concept and the story are the most important part of a photo essay, it won’t have the same success if it’s poorly executed.
• Build a structure – A photo essay is about telling a thought-provoking story – so, think about it in a narrative way. Which images are going to introduce the topic? Which ones represent a climax? How is it going to end – how do you want the viewer to feel after seeing your photo series?
• Make strong choices – If you really want to convey an emotion and a unique point of view, you’re going to need to make some hard decisions. Which light are you using? Which lens? How many images will there be in the series? etc., and most importantly for a great photo essay is the why behind those choices.

9 Tips for Creating a Photo Essay

Credit: Laura James

1. Choose something you know

To make a good photo essay, you don’t need to travel to an exotic location or document a civil war – I mean, it’s great if you can, but you can start close to home.

Depending on the type of photography you do and the topic you’re looking for in your photographic essay, you can photograph a local event or visit an abandoned building outside your town.

It will be much easier for you to find a unique perspective and tell a better story if you’re already familiar with the subject. Also, consider that you might have to return a few times to the same location to get all the photos you need.

2. Follow your passion

Most photo essays take dedication and passion. If you choose a subject that might be easy, but you’re not really into it – the results won’t be as exciting. Taking photos will always be easier and more fun if you’re covering something you’re passionate about.

3. Take your time

A great photo essay is not done in a few hours. You need to put in the time to research it, conceptualizing it, editing, etc. That’s why I previously recommended following your passion because it takes a lot of dedication, and if you’re not passionate about it – it’s difficult to push through.

4. Write a summary or statement

Photo essays are always accompanied by some text. You can do this in the form of an introduction, write captions for each photo or write it as a conclusion. That’s up to you and how you want to present the work.

5. Learn from the masters

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Making a photographic essay takes a lot of practice and knowledge. A great way to become a better photographer and improve your storytelling skills is by studying the work of others. You can go to art shows, review books and magazines and look at the winners in photo contests – most of the time, there’s a category for photo series.

6. Get a wide variety of photos

Think about a story – a literary one. It usually tells you where the story is happening, who is the main character, and it gives you a few details to make you engage with it, right?

The same thing happens with a visual story in a photo essay – you can do some wide-angle shots to establish the scenes and some close-ups to show the details. Make a shot list to ensure you cover all the different angles.

Some of your pictures should guide the viewer in, while others are more climatic and regard the experience they are taking out of your photos.

7. Follow a consistent look

Both in style and aesthetics, all the images in your series need to be coherent. You can achieve this in different ways, from the choice of lighting, the mood, the post-processing, etc.

8. Be self-critical

Once you have all the photos, make sure you edit them with a good dose of self-criticism. Not all the pictures that you took belong in the photo essay. Choose only the best ones and make sure they tell the full story.

9. Ask for constructive feedback

Often, when we’re working on a photo essay project for a long time, everything makes perfect sense in our heads. However, someone outside the project might not be getting the idea. It’s important that you get honest and constructive criticism to improve your photography.

How to Create a Photo Essay in 5 Steps

Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh

1. Choose your topic

This is the first step that you need to take to decide if your photo essay is going to be narrative or thematic. Then, choose what is it going to be about?

Ideally, it should be something that you’re interested in, that you have something to say about it, and it can connect with other people.

2. Research your topic

To tell a good story about something, you need to be familiar with that something. This is especially true when you want to go deeper and make a compelling photo essay. Day in the life photo essays are a popular choice, since often, these can be performed with friends and family, whom you already should know well.

3. Plan your photoshoot

Depending on what you’re photographing, this step can be very different from one project to the next. For a fine art project, you might need to find a location, props, models, a shot list, etc., while a documentary photo essay is about planning the best time to do the photos, what gear to bring with you, finding a local guide, etc.

Every photo essay will need different planning, so before taking pictures, put in the required time to get things right.

4. Experiment

It’s one thing to plan your photo shoot and having a shot list that you have to get, or else the photo essay won’t be complete. It’s another thing to miss out on some amazing photo opportunities that you couldn’t foresee.

So, be prepared but also stay open-minded and experiment with different settings, different perspectives, etc.

5. Make a final selection

Editing your work can be one of the hardest parts of doing a photo essay. Sometimes we can be overly critical, and others, we get attached to bad photos because we put a lot of effort into them or we had a great time doing them.

Try to be as objective as possible, don’t be afraid to ask for opinions and make various revisions before settling down on a final cut.

7 Photo Essay Topics, Ideas & Examples

Credit: Michelle Leman

• Architectural photo essay

Using architecture as your main subject, there are tons of photo essay ideas that you can do. For some inspiration, you can check out the work of Francisco Marin – who was trained as an architect and then turned to photography to “explore a different way to perceive things”.

You can also lookup Luisa Lambri. Amongst her series, you’ll find many photo essay examples in which architecture is the subject she uses to explore the relationship between photography and space.

• Process and transformation photo essay

This is one of the best photo essay topics for beginners because the story tells itself. Pick something that has a beginning and an end, for example, pregnancy, the metamorphosis of a butterfly, the life-cycle of a plant, etc.

Keep in mind that these topics are linear and give you an easy way into the narrative flow – however, it might be difficult to find an interesting perspective and a unique point of view.

• A day in the life of ‘X’ photo essay

There are tons of interesting photo essay ideas in this category – you can follow around a celebrity, a worker, your child, etc. You don’t even have to do it about a human subject – think about doing a photo essay about a day in the life of a racing horse, for example – find something that’s interesting for you.

• Time passing by photo essay

It can be a natural site or a landmark photo essay – whatever is close to you will work best as you’ll need to come back multiple times to capture time passing by. For example, how this place changes throughout the seasons or maybe even over the years.

A fun option if you live with family is to document a birthday party each year, seeing how the subject changes over time. This can be combined with a transformation essay or sorts, documenting the changes in interpersonal relationships over time.

• Travel photo essay

Do you want to make the jump from tourist snapshots into a travel photo essay? Research the place you’re going to be travelling to. Then, choose a topic.

If you’re having trouble with how to do this, check out any travel magazine – National Geographic, for example. They won’t do a generic article about Texas – they do an article about the beach life on the Texas Gulf Coast and another one about the diverse flavors of Texas.

The more specific you get, the deeper you can go with the story.

• Socio-political issues photo essay

This is one of the most popular photo essay examples – it falls under the category of photojournalism or documental photography. They are usually thematic, although it’s also possible to do a narrative one.

Depending on your topic of interest, you can choose topics that involve nature – for example, document the effects of global warming. Another idea is to photograph protests or make an education photo essay.

It doesn’t have to be a big global issue; you can choose something specific to your community – are there too many stray dogs? Make a photo essay about a local animal shelter. The topics are endless.

• Behind the scenes photo essay

A behind-the-scenes always make for a good photo story – people are curious to know what happens and how everything comes together before a show.

Depending on your own interests, this can be a photo essay about a fashion show, a theatre play, a concert, and so on. You’ll probably need to get some permissions, though, not only to shoot but also to showcase or publish those images.

4 Best Photo Essays in Recent times

Now that you know all the techniques about it, it might be helpful to look at some photo essay examples to see how you can put the concept into practice. Here are some famous photo essays from recent times to give you some inspiration.

Habibi by Antonio Faccilongo

This photo essay wan the World Press Photo Story of the Year in 2021. Faccilongo explores a very big conflict from a very specific and intimate point of view – how the Israeli-Palestinian war affects the families.

He chose to use a square format because it allows him to give order to things and eliminate unnecessary elements in his pictures.

With this long-term photo essay, he wanted to highlight the sense of absence and melancholy women and families feel towards their husbands away at war.

The project then became a book edited by Sarah Leen and the graphics of Ramon Pez.

Picture This: New Orleans by Mary Ellen Mark

The last assignment before her passing, Mary Ellen Mark travelled to New Orleans to register the city after a decade after Hurricane Katrina.

The images of the project “bring to life the rebirth and resilience of the people at the heart of this tale”, – says CNNMoney, commissioner of the work.

Each survivor of the hurricane has a story, and Mary Ellen Mark was there to record it. Some of them have heartbreaking stories about everything they had to leave behind.

Others have a story of hope – like Sam and Ben, two eight-year-olds born from frozen embryos kept in a hospital that lost power supply during the hurricane, yet they managed to survive.

Selfie by Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer whose work is mainly done through self-portraits. With them, she explores the concept of identity, gender stereotypes, as well as visual and cultural codes.

One of her latest photo essays was a collaboration with W Magazine entitled Selfie. In it, the author explores the concept of planned candid photos (‘plandid’).

The work was made for Instagram, as the platform is well known for the conflict between the ‘real self’ and the one people present online. Sherman started using Facetune, Perfect365 and YouCam to alter her appearance on selfies – in Photoshop, you can modify everything, but these apps were designed specifically to “make things prettier”- she says, and that’s what she wants to explore in this photo essay.

Tokyo Compression by Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf has an interest in the broad-gauge topic Life in Cities. From there, many photo essays have been derived – amongst them – Tokyo Compression .

He was horrified by the way people in Tokyo are forced to move to the suburbs because of the high prices of the city. Therefore, they are required to make long commutes facing 1,5 hours of train to start their 8+ hour workday followed by another 1,5 hours to get back home.

To portray this way of life, he photographed the people inside the train pressed against the windows looking exhausted, angry or simply absent due to this way of life.

You can visit his website to see other photo essays that revolve around the topic of life in megacities.

Final Words

It’s not easy to make photo essays, so don’t expect to be great at it right from your first project.

Start off small by choosing a specific subject that’s interesting to you –  that will come from an honest place, and it will be a great practice for some bigger projects along the line.

Whether you like to shoot still life or you’re a travel photographer, I hope these photo essay tips and photo essay examples can help you get started and grow in your photography.

Let us know which topics you are working on right now – we’ll love to hear from you!

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Ana Mireles is a Mexican researcher that specializes in photography and communications for the arts and culture sector.

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Roaring Twenties

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• CORE - The Roaring Twenties
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Roaring Twenties , colloquial term for the 1920s, especially within the United States and other Western countries where the decade was characterized by economic prosperity, rapid social and cultural change, and a mood of exuberant optimism. The liveliness of the period stands in marked contrast to the historical crises on either side of it: World War I (1914–18) and the Great Depression (1929–c. 1939). The name may have originated as a play on the nautical term roaring forties , referring to latitudes with strong ocean winds.

By the dawn of the 1920s, the second Industrial Revolution had transformed the United States into a global economic power and drawn millions of Americans to cities. With a concurrent rise in immigration, the 1920 U.S. census was the first in which the majority of the population lived in urban areas. Although World War I had strained the country’s finances, the fact that the United States had entered the war late and that the fighting took place overseas helped it secure a more dominant economic position relative to its European allies.

During the 1920s, the American economy continued to accelerate. One reason was the growing electrification of the country. The portion of U.S. households with electricity rose from 12 percent in 1916 to 63 percent in 1927, and its widening use in factories led to increased productivity. Also contributing to the economic boom was the advent of mass-production methods such as the assembly line , which spurred the growth of the automobile industry. The decade saw the number of passenger cars more than triple, which in turn stimulated the expansion of transportation infrastructure and the oil and gas industries. In addition, the overall business sector benefited from the laissez-faire economic policies of U.S. presidents Warren G. Harding (1921–23) and Calvin Coolidge (1923–29). Between 1922 and 1929, the country’s real gross national product increased by nearly 40 percent, and the unemployment rate remained low.

The technological and manufacturing boom ushered in a modern consumer culture . With electricity came a range of new household appliances, such as the refrigerator, vacuum cleaner, and washing machine, and the increased availability of credit made it possible for many Americans to afford them. The growth of the advertising industry and the development of sophisticated marketing techniques also helped create demand for these and other products in an expanding mass-media landscape. Not only was the radio one of the most popular new electric devices, installed in 40 percent of homes by 1930, but the airwaves became an effective advertising medium. As labour-saving technologies created more opportunities for leisure, a plethora of popular entertainment arose from new media. Moviegoing became an American pastime, especially after the emergence of “ talkies .” By the decade’s end, 80 million people flocked to cinemas weekly, with radio and magazines boosting interest in the stars on the screen.

The 1920s also brought about social changes for women in the United States. Women had entered the workforce in significant numbers during World War I, filling jobs that had been vacated by men sent to war and taking new jobs that aided the war effort. Their contributions galvanized support for the suffrage movement, which culminated in the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Many women remained in the workforce after the war, especially as growing industrialization provided greater opportunities. Young women who were employed in cities enjoyed unprecedented economic independence, and the increased use of contraception (the country’s first birth control clinic was opened in 1916) provided sexual freedom as well. Perhaps the most enduring symbol of the Roaring Twenties is that of the flapper , the emancipated “New Woman” who bobbed her hair, wore loose, knee-length dresses, smoked and drank in public, and was more open about sex.

In a rapidly modernizing world, young people guided creative movements that often defied convention. Jazz music, which had developed into an exciting style defined by improvisation and swinging rhythms, became the dominant sound of the new generation. (Its prominence earned the era another nickname, the Jazz Age, popularized by the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald .) The vitality of jazz was part of a broader flourishing of African American art and culture known as the Harlem Renaissance , which was centred in New York City but reverberated far beyond it. Fitzgerald himself was a leading figure of the Lost Generation , a group of writers whose work captured the era’s decadence and spoke to the disillusionment of many who came of age during World War I.

Although postwar economic conditions were less robust in western Europe than in the United States, the social and cultural milieus were similarly dynamic . In France the 1920s were known as “Les Années Folles” (“The Crazy Years”). In Germany’s Weimar Republic , which produced an explosion of intellectual and artistic activity, they were the “Goldene Zwanziger Jahre” (“Golden Twenties”). The British public was scandalized by the exploits of a set of affluent youth dubbed the Bright Young Things. In the art world, Surrealism grew out of the Dada movement that had developed in Zürich during the war, while Art Deco , promoted by a 1925 exposition in Paris , became highly influential in international architecture and design.

Nevertheless, the popular image of the 1920s as a prosperous, progressive, and jubilant era obscures some realities. In the United States, the decade began with the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment , under which the manufacture and sale of alcohol was prohibited. Despite the emergence of bootleggers and speakeasies , and the glamour associated with drinking illegally, the temperance movement did succeed in significantly reducing Americans’ consumption of alcohol. In addition, while the Great Migration provided a path for African Americans to pursue greater economic and educational opportunities, and the influence of African American culture spread, the 1920s also saw a revival of the Ku Klux Klan . Growing anti-foreign sentiment (also espoused by the new Klan) led to the Immigration Act of 1924, which severely restricted the number of immigrants arriving in the United States.

More generally, not all Americans shared in the spoils of the roaring national economy. In the late 1920s, the wealthiest 1 percent received nearly one-quarter of all pretax income, and 60 percent of families earned less than $2,000 a year, a benchmark that economists regarded as “sufficient to supply only basic necessities.” Rural, nonwhite, and immigrant Americans were among the groups less likely to benefit from the boom. Inequality was one of several factors that contributed to the collapse of the economy in 1929, as the stock market crash in October signaled the end of the Roaring Twenties and the start of the Great Depression.

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African Americans at Work

From enslaved workers in the 19th century to agricultural, industrial, and professional workers in the 20th and 21st centuries, African Americans have always been a vital part of the American workforce. The photographs from the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture below document African Americans at work from the 1860s to today.

Before and During the Civil War

Few photographic images of early American workplaces exist. After all, photography was not invented (in France) until the 1820s, was not introduced in America until the 1840s, and did not become an affordable amateur hobby until the 1880s. Most photographs of African Americans at work before and during the Civil War depict enslaved or recently emancipated workers on farms or plantations

No. 24: A Plantation Scene In South Carolina , ca. 1860. Photograph by S.T. Souder.

Women and children in a cotton field, 1860s. Photograph by J.H. Aylsworth.

Enslaved women and their children near Alexandria, Virginia, December 2, 1861, to March 10, 1862. Photograph by James E. Larkin.

Charleston Slave Hire Badges

From 1800 to 1865 in Charleston, North Carolina, slave hire badges were worn by enslaved individuals who were hired out by their enslavers to work for others. The enslaver paid an annual fee for the badge, providing revenue for the city of Charleston. Wages earned by the enslaved were often kept by the enslaver, but sometimes were shared with the enslaved. The badges served to identify those African Americans who were allowed to move about the city and to ensure that they only worked at jobs for which they were qualified, thus limiting competition with white workers. While some enslaved individuals learned skilled trades (“Mechanic”) useful to their enslavers in the plantation economy, a more common occupation was “House Servant.” These badges were public symbols of the hiring out system which allowed enslavers to allow their slaves a sense of autonomy, while maintaining control over them and profiting from their labor.

Charleston slave badge from 1812 for Fisher No. 103.

Charleston slave badge from 1811 for Porter No. 27.

Charleston slave badge from 1800 for House Servant No. 354.

Charleston slave badge from 1816 for Mechanic No. 39.

Civil War Soldiers

During the Civil War , approximately 179,000 African American men served in the Union Army as U.S. Colored Troops and over 20,000 in the Union Navy. Although Black soldiers were involved in forty major battles and hundreds of skirmishes—and 16 were awarded the Medal of Honor—a disproportionate amount of Black soldiers were assigned work as laborers, digging ditches, building fortifications, and burying the dead.

Carte-de-visite of a sailor named Jim, late 19th century. 

Tintype of a Civil War soldier, 1861–1865.

Photograph of members of the 55th Massachusetts Infantry, 1863–1865.

Colored Pickets on Duty Near Dutch Gap , 1864. 

The Era of Jim Crow

The American nation was fundamentally changed—reconstructed—by three major social process in the century following the emancipation of four million enslaved individuals and the end of the Civil War. Each of these processes of change took decades to be completed and each changed the world of work for both Black and white workers.

First, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution—the so-called Reconstruction Amendments—abolished slavery across the nation, established the notion of “due process of law,” defined citizenship to include everyone born in the United States, extended voting rights to all Black men, and empowered the federal government to protect these rights for all citizens. Newly emancipated African Americans quickly understood that they needed to participate in both the federal legislative system and the court system to enlarge and protect their employment opportunities as integral to their civil rights. While some African Americans found success as professionals in the areas of law, education, and business, by far the great majority were forced into restrictive labor contracts as sharecroppers, while some were even forced into labor as convicts.

W. A. Neely's blacksmith shop in Laurinburg, North Carolina, January 1, 1910.      

Four unidentified men in cooks’ uniforms on a porch, 1941–43.

J. J. Cotten Barbershop, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, ca. 1910.

Convict Labor

According to the Prison Policy Initiative , the United States houses more prisoners than any other country, of whom 38.5% are Black. Within these prisons, many are forced to work, contributing to a multibillion-dollar industry. Yet this form of labor is not included in official employment statistics of Black workers, causing a sector of Black labor to be heavily ignored.

After the passage of the 13th Amendment, involuntary servitude was abolished, “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Soon after, states began passing laws, known as Black Codes, leading to mass incarceration of Black individuals. The system of convict leasing, where prisoners or prisons could legally be purchased to perform labor, began shortly after the Civil War. In some cases, this led to prisoners working on the same lands and for people that previously enslaved them. The impacts of these systems cannot be understated—in 1898, 73% of Alabama’s annual state revenue reportedly came from convict leasing. Many protested and spoke out against this system, calling it slavery under a different name. 

Convict leasing was abolished in all states by the 1930s. However, with the fall of one form of prison labor came a new one—chain gangs. This form of incarcerated labor involved having chains wrapped around the ankles of multiple prisoners while they worked, ate, and slept outside of prison walls. These incarcerated workers labored at gunpoint or risked whipping—leading again to many protesting its use. By the 1950s, chain gangs were abolished in all states due to its violation of the 8th Amendment's “cruel and unusual punishment” clause. 

Today, prison labor continues to be prevalent. In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order #6917 to establish the Federal Prison Industries, now called UNICOR. This program allows the use of incarcerated labor for the government. Incarcerated workers in prison, jails, and even immigration centers work to support their operations and maintenance of prisons. They also work in state-run prison factories, producing common goods and services.  

Convict laborers at Swannanoa Cut, Asheville, North Carolina, ca. 1885. Photograph by Thomas H. Lindsey.

The second fundamental change in African American labor came through the laws and social customs that reinforced white supremacy and a system of “separate but equal” segregation—Jim Crow society. This also created a new hierarchy of occupations: those that were reserved for whites and those open to Black citizens.

Two unidentified women in uniform with toddler, Port Gibson, Mississippi, 1940. Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott.

Beautician brushing an unidentified women’s hair in salon chair, mid-20th century. Photograph by Rev. Henry Clay Anderson.

Grocery Store, 14th & U Streets , ca. 1945. Photograph by Robert H. McNeill.

Barbershop , ca. 1945. Photograph by Robert H. McNeill.

Pullman Porters

Pullman Porters occupied a coveted position in Black communities in the late 19th and early 20th century. These workers, typically Black men, would assist with luggage, maintain sleeping quarters, and serve passengers in the Pullman Palace Car Company’s luxury sleeping cars. The pay was higher than most other employers at the time, travel was possible, and many were able to move on to better jobs in hotels and restaurants.

However, the position did not come without discrimination and racism. George Pullman wanted Black porters, specifically those who were formerly enslaved, because he believed they would work under harsh conditions and would attend to every need of passengers. Porters were often called “boy” or “George” instead of their own names, and they were commonly berated or harassed by customers in the cars.

The Pullman maids were a lesser-known employee of the company: Black women who would clean Pullman cars and cater to guests. They typically worked with women, the elderly, and the infirmed. They often received lower wages from tips than Pullman Porters who worked in cars with businessmen and politicians.

Pullman Porter T.R. Joseph in uniform, ca. 1930s.

Preparing Dinner in the Dining Car Kitchen , mid-20th century.

Pullman Porter James Bryant in uniform, 1973.

Historically, a major sector of work for Black women was midwifery . This practice included caring for mothers and infants during childbirth. Black midwives often used tactics derived from African tradition and were seen very highly in their communities. Midwives were also incredibly important to enslaved communities, as they could keep records of ancestry and community ties. After the Civil War, Black midwives continued to be incredibly important, especially in rural Southern states. Notably, they did not just work for Black mothers, they also supported white mothers in their communities.

With the medicalization of childbirth, the practices of midwives began to be questioned and delegitimized. Maternal and infant mortality rates began to rise, and many blamed midwives. However, midwives had fewer instances of maternal and infant mortality than medical doctors. The passage of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921 made traditional midwifing more difficult with increased regulations, mandatory trainings, and supervision necessary to continue working in the field. Black midwives were often being taught by nurses with less training than themselves.

While leading to better health outcomes of mothers and infants, these regulations led to increased barriers for Black midwives to work in professional maternal healthcare. In particular, requirements to receive state licensing became an obstacle for many. In 2021, only 7% of certified nurse-midwives and certified midwives were Black . Some believe that these historical systemic barriers to Black midwives have contributed to the prominent Black maternal mortality rate seen today

Midwife standing next to woman in bed with bassinet to her left, mid-20th century. Photograph by Rev. Henry Clay Anderson.

Collection of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Robert Galbraith, © 1987 Robert Galbraith

Midwife Susie Carey, 1940–1953.

The third change in Black labor that came about during the Jim Crow Era was the Industrial Revolution. This transition from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial one, was driven by new technologies in manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and communication, that created entirely new occupations and work processes.

Workers outside the Grendel Textile Mill, 1923–1924.

Student working a printing press, ca. 1935. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine.

Workers at the International Harvester tractor works, 1946–1948. From the series The Way of Life of the Northern Negro. Photograph by Wayne F. Miller.

Postal Workers

The United States Postal Service (USPS) plays an important role in Black labor history. As of 2022, almost 29% of the USPS was Black, making it one of the top employers of African Americans in the United States. The history of Black workers in the postal service can be traced to the institution of slavery, with many enslaved persons working as transportation contractors. However, rebellions in Haiti sparked fear in Southern whites, leading to Congress prohibiting African American mail carriers in the postal service until 1865. During the Civil War, the first known Black post office clerk was appointed, William Cooper Nell, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also believed to be the first Black civilian employee of the federal government.

In 1914, the Civil Service Commission issued a new order requiring applicants for federal jobs to submit a photograph. These policies led to the founding of the National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees (NAPFE) an independent, African American controlled labor union with a mission to eliminate discrimination and injustice in the federal service. The 1940s saw the passage of Executive Order #8802, which created the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) to oversee claims of discrimination. By the 1960s, Black representation in the Postal Service was seen at higher leadership levels, with the three biggest post offices in the country having Black Postmasters. In 1971, the Postal Service adopted an Equal Employment Opportunity policy, which aided in the recruitment of minority and female applicants to the organization. Today, the USPS has the highest median annual and hourly wage within the top ten occupations with the highest proportions of Black workers. The wage gap is also narrower among postal workers than in the private sector.

A postal worker sorting mail into cubby holes, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1950. Photograph by Charles “Teenie” Harris.

A mailman outside of Rev. H.C. Anderson's photo shop, mid-20th century. Photograph by Rev. Henry Clay Anderson. 

The Post-Civil Rights Era

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , in 2019, 29% of employed Black Americans worked in education and health services. Another 10% worked in retail trade and 10% in leisure and hospitality. Less than 1% worked in mining, gas, and oil and barely 2% in agriculture, forestry, and fishing.

Architect Norma Sklarek reviewing plans, ca. 1979. Photograph by Jasmin Photo.

Photograph of flight attendant Casey Grant working mid-flight on a 757, 1985–1987.

Bob Johnson, President and founder Black Entertainment Television, in his Georgetown office in the early days of B.E.T evolution , June 5, 1981. Photograph by Milton Williams.

We still have much to learn about the world of work that African Americans have faced over the past four centuries and how it has changed. Until the 20th century, agriculture occupied over 90% of Black workers and now it occupies less than 1%. The causes are many: civil rights activism, affirmative action policies, educational opportunities, entrepreneurial energy, international competition, and the shift from industrial to digital and finance capitalism.

As these photos demonstrate, it is too easy to simply apply labels: “agricultural worker,” “domestic worker,” “skilled tradesman,” “unskilled labor,” “professional,” “union worker.” African Americans are and have been an integral part of the American workforce for centuries.

VIEW PHOTOGRAPHS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AT WORK

Written by Bill Pretzer, Senior Curator of History; Amira Dehmani, Summer 2023 Stanford in Government Afrofuturism Curatorial Intern; and Douglas Remley, Rights & Publications Manager. Published on September 1, 2023

A Rice Raft, South Carolina

A Rice Raft, South Carolina , captured 1895; printed 1904. Photograph by Strohmeyer & Wyman. Published by Underwood & Underwood. 

A woman with plow and oxen, Alabama

A woman with plow and oxen, Alabama, ca. 1875. Photograph by Russell Bros.

A Black nurse with two white children

A Black nurse with two white children, mid- to late 19th century. 

Picking Strawberries, Plant City, Florida

PICKING STRAWBERRIES, PLANT CITY, FLA. , 1946. 

Weighing cotton, Thomasville, Georgia

No. 44, Weighing Cotton , ca. 1895. From the series Views of Thomasville and Vicinity . Photograph by A. W. Möller. 

A store clerk with a customer, Harlem, New York

A store clerk with a customer, Harlem, New York. Photograph by Lloyd W. Yearwood. 

Councilwoman Hilda Mason in her office, Washington, D. C.

Washington D. C. Councilwoman at Large Hilda Mason of the D. C. Statehood Party in her office in the District Building , July 25, 1983. Photograph by Milton Williams. 

Men outside the United Steelworkers of America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Men outside the United Steelworkers of America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1946. Photograph by Charles "Teenie" Harris. 

A coal miner, Library, Pennsylvania

A coal miner, Library, Pennsylvania, ca. 1947. Photograph by Charles "Teenie" Harris. 

Two young men in wood shop, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Two young men in wood shop, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1930–1950. Photograph by Charles "Teenie" Harris. 

A construction worker, Washington, D.C.

Construction Flag Person , 1978. Photograph by Milton Williams. 

A policeman, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

A policeman in a motorcycle with a sidecar, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, mid-20th century. Photograph by Charles "Teenie" Harris. 

Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, Arlington, Virginia

Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray Esq. (1910-1985), civil rights lawyer and Episcopal priest was an activist who fought to dismantle segregation and end discrimination through the courts and on the streets , December 21, 1977. Photograph by Milton Williams. 

Shrimpers on boat, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Shrimpers Eugene Orage and Diogenese Miller on boat, Hilton Head Island, SC , 2004. From the series  Shadows of the Gullah Geechee . Photograph by Pete Marovich. 

A construction worker, Harlem, New York

A construction worker operating a front end loader, Harlem, New York, 1987. Photograph by Lloyd W. Yearwood. 

Salt-N-Pepa recording at Bayside Studios, Queens, New York

Salt-N-Pepa recording at Bayside Studios, February 6, 1989. Photograph by Al Pereira. 

A porter from the Hotel Palomares, Pamona, California

A porter from the Hotel Palomares, Pamona, California, 1885–1899. 

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Essay on Sports in the 1920s

How it works

The 1920s, often called the “Roaring Twenties,” was a time of big changes in society, culture, and the economy. Sports became a huge part of this lively era, grabbing the attention of many Americans and shaping the way people lived. Why did sports get so popular back then? Well, it was a mix of new technology, a booming economy, and the rise of mass media. Let’s dive into the world of 1920s sports and see how it changed American life.

• 1 The Rise of Famous Athletes
• 2 The Power of Mass Media
• 3 Sports for Everyone
• 4 Women in Sports
• 5 Wrapping It Up

The Rise of Famous Athletes

One of the coolest things about sports in the 1920s was the rise of big-name athletes who became superstars. Babe Ruth is probably the most famous of them all. This guy could hit home runs like nobody else, making baseball a must-see event. People flocked to stadiums and tuned into radio broadcasts just to catch his games. Ruth wasn’t just a player; he was a symbol of the American Dream, showing that anyone could make it big with talent and hard work.

Boxing also had its hero in Jack Dempsey. His fierce fighting style and big personality made him a crowd favorite. His matches were huge events, drawing tons of fans and loads of media attention. The “Battle of the Century” against Georges Carpentier in 1921 was one of the first fights to be broadcast on the radio, showing how sports and media were starting to mix.

The Power of Mass Media

The 1920s were a game-changer for sports and media. Radio broadcasts brought live sports into people’s homes, making it a shared national event. Suddenly, you could listen to a baseball game or a boxing match in real-time, which was a totally new experience. Announcers like Graham McNamee became famous for their lively play-by-plays, making the games even more exciting.

Newspapers also played a big part in making sports popular. Sports journalism took off, with dedicated sections in major papers. Writers like Grantland Rice and Ring Lardner wrote about athletes in a way that made them seem larger than life, turning them into cultural icons.

Sports for Everyone

The 1920s saw more people getting involved in sports, no matter their background. With the economy doing well, folks had more money and free time to spend on sports, either by watching or playing. Public sports facilities like baseball fields, tennis courts, and swimming pools popped up everywhere, making it easier for everyone to join in.

There were also some steps toward breaking racial barriers in sports. African American athletes like Paul Robeson, who excelled in multiple sports at Rutgers University, and the Harlem Renaissance basketball team, showed that talent knows no color. These athletes challenged racial stereotypes and paved the way for future integration in sports.

Women in Sports

Women also made big strides in sports during the 1920s, pushing against traditional gender roles. Tennis player Helen Wills, for example, won many Grand Slam titles and became a global star. Her success and style made her a role model for young women and helped make tennis popular among women.

Women’s sports organizations and events like the Women’s Olympics started up, giving female athletes more chances to shine. These changes were part of a bigger movement towards gender equality and showed that attitudes towards women were starting to shift.

Wrapping It Up

The 1920s were a big deal for sports in America. Iconic athletes emerged, mass media started to play a huge role, sports became accessible to more people, and women began to break into the sports scene. These changes didn’t just affect sports; they shaped American culture and society in ways that are still felt today. The foundations laid in the 1920s continue to influence how we experience sports now.

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George M. Johnson’s “Flamboyants” uncovers the heroes of Black queer history

Beyoncé’s “Welcome to the Renaissance”—which opened every show of her $579.8 million-grossing, 39-city concert tour of 2023—was an invitation to step into a brave world celebrating Black creativity, intersectionality and multi-faceted expressions of sexual identity. It looked back at one of the most impactful moments of intellectualism, social consciousness, and artistic expression in Black History, The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, to help create a better future.

Into this august territory steps author George M. Johnson with his new book  Flamboyants: The Queer Harlem Renaissance I Wish I’d Known , a celebration of “writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history.” Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer—and whose stories deserve to be retold, celebrated and remembered.

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Johnson, whose  Ne w York Times Best Selling memoir  All Boys Aren’t Blue  is one of the most banned books in the United States, is at the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist. Flamboyants explores the expansive and intersectional existence of Black queer life from the past to create space for the future.

Native Son asked Johnson five questions about Flamboyants , the Harlem Renaissance, and which historical figure inspires. 

Native Son: What is the origin story of Flamboyants ? 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by George M Johnson (@iamgmjohnson)

George M. Johnson: Flamboyants is interesting in the sense that we originally wanted to do this on television or in film. I worked with Twiggy Pucci Garçon, my sister, my best friend. We own a production company together called No Shade. And during the pandemic, after All Boys Aren’t Blue was optioned by Gabrielle Union, we were like, Oh, we wanna create more stories and renaissance-like periods of queerness where the stories have been told either incorrectly or not given the full Black experience . So we were pitching, having general meetings, but the industry was just in a weird place.

I already have two books out. I’m doing great in the Young Adult Space and I live by Tony Morrison’s words: If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it. And it’s like, baby, I should write the book . Originally the book was gonna be more biographical, but it charnged with the illustrations, with the poetry.

Native Son: The Harlem Renaissance was a vibrant, creative, and politically charged era where Black folks thrived. What inspires you most about it? 

George M. Johnson: I think the thing that inspired me the most about the Harlem Renaissance was the societal standards. And I mean that in the sense of the Great Depression what was happening in 1929. It was a period of resiliency, period. Just the fact that you have the Women’s Rights Movement, the Women’s Suffrage Movement—there were so many other movements happening at the same time, and mind you, this is still the Harlem Renaissance prior to the actual civil rights movement in the ‘60s. This was a period of amazing Black expansion. This was a period where we really had to go hard in the late 1800s. We started getting our first political offices with the ability to even be able to vote as Black men ’cause Black women were not able to vote. 

We were going to expand in every area. We are going to expand arts and culture and Black Wall Street, and all of these things. But for all intents and purposes of this book, it was the beauty of watching pivotal figures—people like Zora Neale Hurston who helped us understand accents, dialect, and Southern culture. I feel like that’s what the Harlem Renaissance was. This was our first inkling of Diasporic work to the masses where you have Josephine Baker. There were just so many of them who traveled overseas and our work expanded beyond what the notion of an African American was. That’s what I love most about this period and the expansiveness of us. Even ballroom culture was also involved. It’s like everything that we have today we touched on in that period. 

Native Son: So we’re kind of in that same time period now—where it’s really dark. There are all these movements. It’s expansive. So why is this book perfect for today? 

George M. Johnson: The book is perfect for today because when I think about Alaine Locke and The New Negro, it was the African American Bible. And so we’re almost a hundred years later now. And this was not planned in that way. But I was inspired to learn about these figures. To learn about Alaine and so many other people. Almost a hundred years later I’m putting something into the world that was put into the world a hundred years ago. It felt like my ancestors put this together. Alaine put together artists, speakers, orators, and writers. I’m grateful for the fact that not only did I have an understanding because was able read about so many of these people, but that a hundred years later I get to kind of re-share these people with the world.

Native Son: Your books focuse on educating young LGBTQ folks and normalizing their experiences, normalizing their existence. What do you want young people to learn from Flamboyance and the Harlem Renaissance? 

George M. Johnson: Yes. The takeaway from Flamboyants and the Harlem Renaissance is: You’ve been here before. A person like you has existed before. A person like you has had to navigate this before . That was the ultimate premise. In the introduction chapter I talk about how my heroes were hidden from me, my heroes have been stolen from me. I grew up as a Black kid not knowing what queerness was, not fully understanding what it was, but there were people who also grew up like me and I should have been able to learn about them. They had some of the similar identity struggles that I had. And that’s what’s been most unfortunate. The fact that I grew up not knowing who Zora Neale Hurston was and Josephine Baker and Ma Rainey and Bessy Smith and Langston Hughes, the list goes on. The biggest piece is letting people know that people existed like you before you, who have fought this fight for you. So continue to fight the fight, but also know you have heroes who came before you, too. 

Native Son: Who’s your favorite figure from the Harlem Renaissance and why? 

George M. Johnson: Okay. Okay. Very, very good question. It is hard. It is between Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. I feel like Langston Hughes would’ve been the Wendy Williams of our era. I’m screaming because he knew everybody and knew everybody’s business and that’s probably why he had fallouts with Lorraine Hansberry and everybody else. Because Langston Hughes knew the tea. The person I related to most was Countee Cullen. He was really the one with the biggest juxtaposition of his identity versus his societal stance. He married W.E.B. Du Bois’s daughter and was bisexual. The fact of the matter is that he had the biggest Black wedding probably ever recorded—over 3000 people showed up. All of the Black intelligentsia showed up, but also all of the Black radicals. I think I was able to relate to him the most because I think that is the part of identity we struggle with, having to fit into multiple communities when we’re a leader. And he was leader—his poetry was amazing, his thinking was amazing, but also can we really be led by a single person? And that is something that a hundred years later we still grapple with.

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