[African Americana]. [Kansas]

[Cabinet Card of a Handsome African-American Couple]

Ottawa, Ks. Lynn Harris, [ca. 1890]. Cabinet card photograph. Moderate rubbing and scratching to image. Minor chips to lower corners. Light dust soiling and staining. Good. Item #6442

A composed studio portrait of an African American couple, the seated man in jacket and striped tie and the standing woman in a fitted dress with gloves, posed beside a small draped table with a bowler hat on it. The photograph offers an uncommon formal portrait of Black life in Kansas in the decades following Reconstruction. After 1879, thousands of African Americans migrated to the state in the Exoduster movement, establishing communities throughout eastern Kansas, including towns such as Ottawa. These settlers, many formerly enslaved people from the South, built institutions churches, schools, newspapers—and sought to assert stability, dignity, and social mobility in a region that, while far from free of discrimination, offered comparatively greater autonomy and opportunity than the post-Reconstruction South. The photographer, likely C. Lynn Harris (b. 1865), is imperfectly documented but appears to have operated studios in Kansas and later in Indiana and Missouri, with activity extending into the early 20th century; a brief partnership with A. M. Garrison in the mid-1880s is recorded, after which Harris continued independently in the trade. His Ottawa imprint, Opera House Gallery, follows a common pattern of photographic studios naming themselves after nearby local landmarks. The verso bears a contemporary or near-contemporary inscription (B. F. Echols / 701), likely identifying a sitter or original owner.

Price: $500.00