Separate, But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson [Hardcover]

Henry Clay Anderson (Author, Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2002

An extraordinary treasure: Rediscovered photographs document a proud community of middle-class Southern blacks at the dawn of the civil rights movement. . Henry Clay Anderson established Anderson Photo Service in Greenville, Mississippi in 1948. Throughout the 50s and 60s, he photographed this relatively prosperous black community, recording the daily lives of the men and women who built the schools, churches, and hospitals that served their segregated society. He photographed family gatherings, weddings, funerals, and events at the high school. He photographed nightclub musicians, itinerant entertainers, and a wide range of professionals at work. His mission had strong political overtones. But this rich archive of photographs would have been destroyed and forgotten had it not been for Shawn Wilson, a young filmmaker, whose search for his own family photographs led him to Anderson's studio. The 95 photographs contained in this book are art objects, but they are also historical documents. In his accompanying essay, writer Clifton Taulbert guides us through them, recalling his own memories of Greenville. The book also contains an interview with the late photographer and an essay on the political climate at the time. Together, these materials create a window into a world that has been overlooked in the aftermath of the civil rights movement-a community of prosperous, optimistic black Southerners who considered themselves first-class Americans despite living in a deeply segregated world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"I received my first camera when I was about nine years old," Anderson writes in one of the five essays accompanying this collection of his work. "I tried to catch pictures of people, cats, trees, houses, whatever was interesting to me as a little boy." After studying photography on the GI Bill, Anderson opened a studio in Greenville, Mississippi, in 1948. This slim volume presents 130 or so straightforward but affecting photos of a conservative, respectable, and separate African-American world during the Jim Crow years. Anderson documents children in their Sunday best, a postman, a majorette, a white-frocked girl posing next to a birthday cake with six candles, teenaged bathing beauties parading in front of a crowd, a group shot of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels ("The Greatest Colored Show on Earth") and weddings and funerals. The pictures show a way of life that, for obvious reasons, will not inspire nostalgia, but which certainly had its share of dignity and beauty. And to young would-be photographers, Anderson advised: "Try to show not the picture only, but show the person who had the ambition. And if he's showing it, he shows himself."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Anderson (1911-98), who lived through segregation and then the Civil Rights Movement, captured the experience in photographs. Taken from the 1940s to the 1960s, the 130 striking black-and-white images presented here sum up the black experience through the daily acts of Greenville, MS, residents as they march, attend church, and relax.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1st edition (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586480928
• ISBN-13: 978-1586480929
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,561,394 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Unexplored History, November 20, 2002

By 

David Wilson (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Separate, But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson (Hardcover)

Separate But Equal is a unique gem. A combination of historic photographs and personal essays, it chronicles the lives of an African American working middle-class living in the Mississippi Delta during the years of segregation.

H.C. Anderson snapped the deceptively simple but beautiful photographs, and they are a revelation. Through the lens of his camera, he documented a segregated but proud society aspiring to its own version of the "American dream." Anderson provides us a personal glimpse into the lives of children and families celebrating special events - beauty contests, weddings, proms, birthday parties - and they are truly dressed for the occasion!
One of the more striking photographs depicts a mid-wife who has just helped deliver a baby in a family home. The bedroom floor is covered in newspaper, as the new mother looks on from her bed, covered by a clean crisp white sheet. Although the photographs primarily focus on the every day lives of their subjects, there are also powerful photographs documenting the burgeoning civil rights movement, and a grim reminder of the fate suffered by some individuals who chose to play an active role.

The essays accompanying the photographs provide insight into Greenville's history. As seen through the wide-eyed amazement of a child, noted writer Clifton L. Taulbert paints a vivid picture of his youthful visits to the prosperous and magical Greenville, the "Queen City of the Delta." Taulbert along with Shawn Wilson provides the reader with a fascinating insider's view of the process involved in bringing this book to print. In a personal and touching essay, Wilson reflects on how the search for an old photograph of his mother, long since deceased, led him back home to Greenville and Mr. Anderson. It was there in Anderson's now defunct photography studio, that Wilson discovered the wealth of photographs comprising Anderson's life long work. Reluctant but trusting, the aging Anderson handed over his photographs so that Wilson might share them with the world. In doing so, we have the opportunity to view images of a rarely explored segment of society, one that combines both the struggle AND celebration of life during the period of Southern segregation.

This wonderful book would make a great holiday gift for those that love history or photography!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A successful black community, October 4, 2004

By 

Peter Durward Harris "Pete the music fan" (Leicester England) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Separate, But Equal: Images from the Segregated South (Hardcover)

During the middle of the twentieth century, American black and white people lived in separate communities by law. White people never entered black areas while black people only entered white areas if they were employed as butlers or maids. This segregation created many impoverished black ghettos but there were a few black communities that prospered and this book is about one of them, in Greenville, in the American state of Mississippi.

The inspiration for - and focus of - the book is the collection of photographs by Henry Clay Anderson who died in 1998, a few months after selling that collection to Shawn Wilson. These photographs show successful black people going about their normal lives at school, at home, at weddings and a variety of other everyday situations as well as photographs taken in a studio. Most of these photographs would be unremarkable if they were of white people, but because most photographs of black people are of the poor and oppressed, these photographs may come as a revelation to some.

Supporting text by Clifton L. Taulbert, who remembers the area from his childhood (he was raised in a nearby community), explains what Greenville was like during the period in which these photographs were taken. Greenville is not one of America's more famous locations. I only recognize the name because it is mentioned in a song that I know well - Mississippi, by the Dutch pop group, Pussycat. As this book is about a particular period in Greenville's history, I (and I'm sure many readers of this book) would have appreciated the inclusion of a chapter about Greenville's history and culture to set this book in context, explaining what it was like before the period covered and hw things have changed since. In its absence, I have to drop the book (otherwise easily worth five stars), to four stars.

Another chapter is devoted to the rise of the civil rights movement and the murder of the Reverend Gus Lee, accompanied by some dramatic photographs that are not typical of the rest of the book, which set out to portray the good aspects of black people's lives. However, bad things happen to everybody and it was necessary to cover this episode in the book.

This book, despite the murder, shows that black people can be very successful. It's the kind of book that shouldn't be necessary and it's a sad reflection on society that it was felt necessary to publish this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Hometown in Print, November 28, 2002

By 

C. B. Hardy (Colorado Springs, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Separate, But Equal: The Mississippi Photographs of Henry Clay Anderson (Hardcover)

I am a Greenville native who just sat down and shared this book with my mother who still lives in Greenville, Mississippi. She remembers the photographer and we both knew people mentioned in the book and some of the people in the pictures. It is a great depiction of early Black life in the Delta and tells a compelling story of the photographer,
Mr. Anderson. It shows that not all black Mississippians in the early days were cottonpickers living on plantations. The town of Greenville has a rich history, this book gives a minor glimpse of it. I wish the photo index had of had exact names of the people in them, that would have made it even more personal and touching.