John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

Ben Shahn and the Medicine Show, Huntingdon, Tennessee, 1935

This is not a slave auction. After all, the photo was made in 1935, 70 years after emancipation. But our twenty-first century eyes might have trouble figuring out exactly what's going on. The photographer, Ben Shahn, would have recognized the scene immediately. It's a traveling medicine show, a once popular... Read more →

America in Blackface: Photos from the Farm Security Administration

This is weird little photograph. (You'll want to click directly on it to see a larger version.) It shows a slightly bewildered group of white southern school kids gathering around their teacher to have blackface makeup put on their face and arms, and one little girl, looking in a mirror,... Read more →