UVA Today

Opened in honor of Black History Month, the exhibition is now on display in the Special Collections Library and will remain there through April 20. It features more than 300 faces, contained in 26 photographs, paintings and other images of African-Americans.

There are a few famous faces – the Obama family makes an appearance, for example – but for the most part, the faces in the photos are, and likely will remain, unknown, like this one of an anonymous man in an ox-drawn cart on Charlottesville’s West Main Street. The photo was taken by Rufus Holsinger, who moved to Charlottesville in the 1880s and took more than 10,000 photographs of local residents, including approximately 600 African-Americans.

There are also stories of women like Ella, a former slave cited in the exhibition description posted near the display cases. Ella began life in slavery in Virginia and later worked as a midwife and laundress, eventually saving enough money to buy five acres of land during the 1890s.

Ella is also curator Regina Rush’s great-grandmother.

Alumni Thomas Dickerson and Christine Mckee at the 1975 Black Culture Week Ball, hosted by the Black Student Alliance at UVA. (Black Culture Week Ball, University of Virginia, February 1975. Photograph from a University Archives negative.) (RG-5/7/2.821))

Though no photo of Ella remains, other images in the exhibition feature men and women like her.

They include a laundress referred to as “Ms. Hattie,” a chauffeur, the anonymous man in the ox-drawn cart, brides and bridegrooms captured on their wedding day. Soldiers returning from the front. Men and women, going about their everyday lives.

There is even a photo of two unknown UVA alumni, coming together for a reunion years after graduation.

“Many Black History Month exhibits feature famous African-Americans. There is nothing wrong with that, but I wanted this exhibit to be different, to feature everyday people,” Jordan said.

He was inspired by a 1969 song, “Everyday People,” by soul music group Sly and the Family Stone, with lyrics including:

“The butcher, the banker, the drummer and then/Makes no difference what group I’m in/I am everyday people,” and “I am no better and neither are you/We are the same whatever we do/You love me, you hate me, you know me and then/You can’t figure out the bag I’m in.”

“Some of these people did extraordinary things, but most of them, we don’t know their names and probably never will,” Ervin said. “Still, these faces are poignant, they are powerful, they are strong. They tell a story.”

The "Everyday People: Images of Blackness, 1700s - 2000s" exhibition will be on display on the first floor of UVA's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library through April 20. The exhibition is free and open to the public.