Journal of American Studies of Turkey
41 (2015): 69-94
Massified Illusions of Difference:
Photography and the Mystique of the American Historically Black
Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
Abstract
The focus of this research centers on the public personas presented
by American Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) through
photographs. HBCUs often chose to present themselves in a manner likely
to advance their stature to benefactors, donors, philanthropists, government
officials, and potential faculty and students. The types of photographs
employed by the HBCU promoted them as an institution that offered hope
and promise to African Americans as depicted through the dominant visual
tropes employed by white society. As such, the use of photography in this
manner was an attempt to join the dominant white social and political
structure through the medium’s democratizing characteristics. However,
Fisk Jubilee Singers circa 1880 (Photograph Courtesy of Fisk University)
Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
what has been consistently left out of these images is the HBCU’s mission
to promote and accentuate its specific alignment toward African American
students.
Keywords
Historically Black College and University; African-American
students; photography; massification; corporate identity
When the Jubilee Singers of the Fisk Free Colored School set out on
their tour in 1871, George L. White, the school’s singing instructor, wellunderstood that his “pioneer band of genuine Ethiopian Minstrels without
the burnt cork” were a form of living advertisement for the fledgling (and
ailing) institution (Richardson 25). In Tennessee, the troupe rejected their
standard playlist of Negro spirituals. Instead, they performed “white man’s
music” to “prove they could do as well as whites.” In October, the troupe
turned north, but this tour was different than their local exhibitions.
Instead of rejecting black spirituals, they steadily incorporated more of
them into their repertoire. After introducing “slave songs” (Negro spirituals)
as encores into some early performances, White noticed that musically
adept audiences in the North often transcended the “white disparagement”
most Southerners had of spirituals. Soon, White changed the program so
that most, if not all, of the songs performed were Negro spirituals. By the
end of 1872, the Singers had performed their spirituals in cities such as
Cincinnati, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, and at the White House at the
direct behest of President Grant. The group went on to tour Europe in
1873 and earned respect for black spirituals, the admiration of many on
two continents (including Queen Victoria), and, eventually, $50,000 to
get Fisk onto a solid financial footing (Richardson 28). This illustration
of the Fisk Jubilee Singers is a telling one. Initially reluctant to sing Negro
spirituals in fear of alienating potential Southern white benefactors, they
eventually realized that their reputation and finances benefited when they
changed to a notably “colored” form of artistic expression.
As the tour and the photographs demonstrate, the Jubilee singers
did not just advertise Fisk University through their singing, they actively
promoted it through their comportment, dress, manners, and public
grace. During their tour, the Singers, the most public of Fisk’s students,
prominently posed in stately pictures wearing sophisticated Victorian
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garb. The Singers’ divas appeared in light, showy gowns draped perfectly
over their legs and set down against the floor in a perfect line. The male
choristers appeared sophisticated and suave while dressed in their best
Victorian suits with their stiffened cuffs and collars. Unlike their music,
which changed along with the tastes of their audiences, the mise en scène
of their photographs always appealed to the dominant culture’s sense of
civilization and modernity.
Just as the Singers had used the dominant culture’s tropes in its images,
the types of photographs employed by America’s historically black colleges
and universities (HBCUs) also use the dominant visual tropes employed
by white society, and just as the Singers did immediately following the
Civil War, HBCUs often chose to present themselves visually in a manner
likely to advance their stature to benefactors, donors, philanthropists,
government officials, and potential faculty and students. As such, the
HBCUs’ use of photography was often a strategic attempt to become part
of the dominant white social and political structure through the medium’s
democratizing characteristics. However, what has been consistently left
out of those images was the HBCU’s mission to primarily serve African
American students. Although HBCUs have attempted to use photography’s
democratic characteristics as a tool of promotion, these institutions have
often succumbed to the massifying effects of the medium, which has
ensured that the photographs presented by the HBCU have often co-opted
and/or replicated most (if not all) of the imagery, symbolism, and semiotic
hallmarks used to promote the most generic idea of the university by the
dominant culture. Put more simply: if HBCUs were to serve the unique
needs and characteristics of American blacks, why were the photographs
they used as promotional devices so devoid of black-specific imagery?
Deconstructing the Photographs and their Meanings
We will attempt to systematically deconstruct the photographs in
our study using one of the primary frameworks available to historians for
this type of analysis developed by John Szarkowski (1966), and John E.
Carter (1993). Although historians have long-known that photographs
provided “data in regard to dress, artifacts, and everyday living […] that
escaped written records,” few historians bother to seriously look at them
(Peters and Mergen 281-2). From the beginning, photographers and their
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Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
audiences were well-aware of the medium’s ability to provide information
unobtainable in any other manner, but history has been built on the
analysis of documents. As such, many of the questions posed by historians
do not lend themselves well to the information photographs provide.
Szarkowski believed that five elements described and qualified
a photograph’s visual components (286-7). First, a photograph has a
subject (the “Thing Itself”) which is coded into two-dimensions on the
presentation medium. Second, a photograph has “Detail,” which comprises
the fragments of the visual whole the photographer chooses to encompass
in his or her image. The third, the “Frame,” defines the content of the
picture and shows or creates relationships vis-à-vis the subject. The fourth
element, “Time,” relates to the fragmentary moment captured by the
shutter that ensures that each photograph and the elements within it are
distinct and separate from any other photograph taken prior or afterwards.
The final element, “Vantage Point,” describes the photographer’s spatial
relationship to the subject, which gives an image’s viewer a definitive and
unchangeable perspective on that subject. While these visual components
are certainly necessary to understand the scene the photograph portrays,
they are interpretively incomplete without understanding the circumstances
under which the photograph were taken in the first place. Carter suggests
that “knowledge about the circumstances under which photographs come
into existence is at the center” of their competent use (55-66). We must
understand the reasons a photograph came into existence, the audience
for which it was intended (particularly their expectations and desires),
and if a human is photographed, that subject’s “message.” By combining
Szarkowski’s elemental analysis with Carter’s interpretive framework in
our deconstructions, we can come to understand a meaning and presence
a photograph conveys to its viewers. While the photographer of the HBCU
and its associated individuals may or may not have had a comprehensive
artistic mise in scene in mind, the use of the images in the manner we
described relied on mass-printed media (with or without narrative copy)
rather than artistic displays. The images of our concern were intended to
be viewed in a similar manner as one would view an image used in an
advertisement. This being the case, our analysis certainly considers the
photographer’s semiotic vision, but places emphasis on the intended
audience since, in its commoditized form, the image is not intended for
detailed deconstruction by its viewer.
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Just as they were used by Fisk’s Jubilee Singers, the photographs
chosen for HBCU promotional materials would be worthless artifacts unless
they had some sort of targeted audience with shared interpretive resources.
Who is this audience and what are the images designed to portray to and
impress upon them? We argue that the HBCUs are appealing to a type of
extended group known as a “brand community” that has preconceived
ideas that they project upon the universities. A brand community is
defined as “a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on
a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand” (Muniz and
O’Guinn 412-32). Although HBCUs are not “brands” in the commercial
sense, their targeted appeals to a particular community and their reliance
on narratives steeped in mythological images of racial pride, understanding,
and solidarity are directed toward African Americans and their shared
communal bonds, similar to the way in which music, movies, or products
are marketed as “black.” Photographs designed to promote a university
have a commoditized presence meant to distinguish the institution among
varied higher education institutional types. This branding process is
intimately related to pervasive representations of a distinguishable segment
of college-bound students of African descent. Moreover, for the branding
process to be most effective, parents, other academics, potential donors,
business partners, and community and political leaders who also harbor
similar predetermined understandings of HBCUs must also be engaged.
In other words, the HBCU, through images, is offering to this brand
community a message that reinforces preexisting ideas about what that
college or university will offer them as potential students, donors, or others
who would choose to associate themselves with it.
Subsequently, HBCUs using photographs in this manner constantly
walk the boundary between attracting those who “know” what an idealized
space a university is supposed to represent (those who are institutionally
or culturally exposed to the concept of the generic university), and those
who would be attracted to distinguishing identifiers related to that one
institution or institutional type only (e.g. religious universities, engineering
universities, etc.). In order to better understand who comprises the
viewing community and what they expect, photographs will be analyzed
vis-à-vis their intended target against the criteria that distinguishes one
brand community from another. At their core, brand communities are
similar to the imagined communities as outlined by Benedict Anderson in
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Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
1983 (Anderson, 13-15; Muniz and O’Guinn, 413). Brand communities,
like nearly all geographically disassociated communities, rely on an
“intrinsic connection that members feel toward one another” which
forms a “collective sense of difference from others not in the community”
(Muniz and O’Guinn 413). Put another way, brand communities do not
exclusively rely on geographic proximity in order to build their communal
bonds. Instead, connections are formed by imagined based on perceived
accomplishments, goals, attractions, emotions, and loyalties centered on a
product, brand, or some other highly visible and endearing object, premise,
ideology, or presence upon which social identifications can be formed
Muniz and O’Guinn 38-54). This connection, shared rituals and traditions,
along with a “felt sense of duty or obligation to the community as a whole”
defines a brand community (McAlexander, Schouten, and Koening 413).
In our case, the community of interest is defined by their relationship to
the contemporary idealized image of the university, and, more specifically,
the idealized HBCU that, though created in a segregationist era, provided
indispensable psychological and material shelter while persisting as the
primary avenue for the creation of the black middle class. Although the
brand community associated with all of the promises of the “university” as
a whole may not be affiliated with the “brand” presented by the HBCU, it
is our contention that the brand community associated with the HBCU is
a wholly-contained subset of the community affiliated with the dominant
university since a great deal of the HBCU’s identifiers are derived directly
from and are in close association with the dominant, white university.
Massification and the Photograph
Massification, simply defined, is the homogenizing of distinctiveness
brought about by mass consumption and cultural absorption. Massified
objects or ideas break “down the old barriers of class, tradition, taste” and
dissolves “all cultural distinctions […] it mixes and scrambles everything
together, producing what might be called a homogenizing culture”
(Macdonald 62). By the mid-1890s, after the introduction of George
Eastman’s portable Kodak camera, photography become democratizing
and was well on its way toward massification that essentially eliminated
any esoteric artistic or technical training (no matter how slight) from
the art form (Peterson and Di Maggio 497-506; Robinson 206-225).
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Massified Illusions of Difference
Traditionally-trained artists who used photography as a medium bemoaned
its democratization, saying the art form had become “so common as to
be unremarkable” (Tagg 56). Photographs had ceased to be treasured,
prized, and used as symbols of class status, and, instead had become “items
of passing interest with no residual value, to be consumed and thrown
away” (Tagg 56). Although photography’s aesthetic traditions continued
within an esoteric community of artistic photographers, the public at-large
quickly traded images meant to distinguish class, status, or persona for
photographs that were conveyors of commodified and massified ideals in
favor of photobytes of information that were easily interpreted, digested,
and understood.
The massification of photography meant that anyone trying to make
a point could easily do so through photographs displaying commoditized
mise-en-scènes that presented idealized images already known to the viewer.
While the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words,” a massified image
is worth far more since it conveys a great deal of information that does not
have to be explained to the receiver since that party is well-aware of the
meaning conveyed. These meanings have probably been absorbed over
the viewer’s lifetime. For advertisers, few devices have been as powerful as
the photograph. Systematic studies conducted in the 1960s demonstrated
that potential customers recalled and identified photographs of products
with eighty seven-percent accuracy, even after ninety seven days of their
first and only viewing (Edell and Staelin 45-61). Study after study has
concluded similarly—the photographic image is nearly unrivaled in its
ability to elicit associative knowledge from an individual.
The Mythology/Mystique of the HBCU
The Fisk choir images from the late 1800s demonstrate that promoters
well-understood the usefulness of photographs in conveying pre-digested
messages. It is clear that promoters of the HBCU and its mission were
quick to capitalize on the photograph to demonstrate the core ideals
of their institutions and what they hoped to accomplish. However, this
intersection of image and paragon could not exist without drawing upon
the dominant cultural interpretations of their ideals. Thanks to the effects
of democratization and massification, photographs used in this manner
(non-artistic) would not be interpreted through the artistic analysis of an
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Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
art aficionado. But instead, these photographs were intended for mass
public consumption. More specifically, the images were targeted at those
who already understood and had preexisting cognitive definitions of the
idealized university (both in its dominant and minority forms) and what is
known as the “black college mystique.” The cornerstone of this mystique
was (and still is) the idea that despite racist conventions, inequitable
distribution of vital resources or the legacy of dejure/defacto racist practices
African Americans who attended black schools would ultimately be better
positioned in mainstream American society. Moreover, a central part of that
positioning results from vital insights and understandings about navigating/
assimilating into America that is best imparted through an education in a
predominantly black context. Consequently, the photographs presented
as examples of the HBCU could not appeal to a mass audience unless that
audience, which included both blacks and whites, already understood
what they were viewing. Then exactly what were the ideals that HBCUs
hoped to demonstrate through these photographs and how could they be
received by a culturally-dominant and culturally-minority audience in a
manner that presented their message in a massified form?
Nearly four decades before Lincoln signed the Emancipation
Proclamation, Alexander Twilight, a graduate of Middlebury College,
became the first African American to receive a degree from a US college in
1823. However despite the fact that schools like Middlebury and Oberlin
may have admitted African American students prior to the end of slavery,
enrolling a limited number of African American students was a drastically
different educational venture than establishing post-secondary institutions
specifically for African Americans. Hence nineteenth-century African
American educational pioneers like Anna Julia Cooper, John Russwurm,
and Charles Reason had drastically different experiences being educated in
European American schools than their predecessors like W. E. B. Dubois
and Booker T. Washington who attended predominantly African American
schools. Defining this difference—which we will refer to as the “black
college mystique” in some regards and the “mythology associated with
black colleges” in others—is difficult because there is no monolithic black
college experience. However, there are certain stories and nostalgic events
that relate specifically to the commoditized photographic representations
that this article conducts inquiry into. Further, these collective accounts
are an intricate part of the mystique and mythology that still pervades
black colleges and universities today.
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For instance, Booker T. Washington attended Hampton Institute,
one of the nation’s oldest HBCUs. His personal narrative recounted in
his record selling autobiography Up From Slavery, represents an ongoing
story of education at HBCUs. Washington, a former slave, arrived at
Hampton Institute in Virginia penniless but with an unquenchable desire
for education. The then principle and founder of Hampton and former
Civil War Union Army general, Samuel Chapman Armstrong promised
Washington if he were willing to subject himself to a rigorous form of
manual training and moral development he would afford him room, board
and a formal education.
Understanding the significance of the events surrounding this story
is an indispensable part of understanding the mystique and mythology
associated with black colleges. First the scarcity of resources that
undergirds Washington’s story has been an issue for HBCUs from their
inception to the present. For a community fresh out of slavery, education
was regarded as a vital element of survival in a rapidly evolving nation.
So no matter the cost, it was considered both the school’s and the entire
community’s responsibility to work to establish a means for education
for economic, political, and social uplift. Next, the majority of HBCUs
were established in the southeastern region of the United States where
the bulk of the black population lived. The south was still reeling from
the devastation and social upheaval associated with their losing the Civil
War. And education was seen as a vital tool for helping to assimilate the
nearly twenty million newly emancipated freedmen and women into the
New South. Consequently, founding schools for African Americans in this
region and in this era was deeply entrenched between the specter of John
Brown and Jim Crow. Hence, a uniquely American legacy of race and
racism could not help but drastically impact everything from the financing,
staffing, curricular decisions (and most importantly for our project) the
mass-marketed representations of HBCUs.
Lastly, taking account of Washington’s complex relationship
with Hampton founder Samuel Armstrong and his northern patrician
contemporaries (whom historian William Watkins critically refers to as The
White Architects of Black Education) is also a vital part of coming to terms
with the HBCU mythology and mystique. Washington’s attempts to walk
a continuous tightrope between appeasing this extremely powerful class
of white industrialists, while simultaneously appealing to the educational
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Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
aspirations of newly emancipated African Americans makes him a
controversial figure within the black community. Some segments within
the black community characterize Washington as a sellout or an Uncle
Tom who sacrificed the political and social uplift of newly emancipated
African Americans for personal gain; while others characterize him as the
“Great Compromiser,” who pragmatically accepted second-class citizen
status for the newly emancipated as a first step towards full inclusion in
America. Regardless of where one stands on this continuum considering
Washington a friend, foe, or somewhere in between, recognizing his
negotiation with whites who significantly controlled the financing and
continued existence of African American higher education is an ongoing
part of the legacy of black schools. This complex relationship and
unending negotiations between white funders and black aspirations and
more profoundly how HBCUs were conceptualized by and subsequently
fit into the broader political economy of white America is beyond the scope
of Washington’s personal narrative, yet central to the representations of
HBCUs. In fact, through this article we argue that the afore-referenced
areas—constant financial instability, the establishment and continued
functioning in a racist environment, and subsequently negotiating from a
power down position with groups that have competing interests—led to
an inordinate amount of energy being focused on legitimacy and validation
by white society. This tenuous relationship between black institutions
established in a segregationist and rapidly evolving America leads to
ongoing discussions questioning the ultimate value of HBCUs. Is there a
uniqueness or a mystique associated with black colleges beyond marching
bands and black Greek organizations or is this mystique simply the residue
of a race problem that the nation has long worked through? Or in a more
pointed manner, what is the significance of the “B” or “Black” in HBCU—
is it all mythology without meaningful connections to the lofty aims of
combating the legacy of race and racism in America?
The millions of dollars and other resources provided by these northern
industrialists were given with specific material and ideological expectations.
Nostalgic tales of kindly white caretakers of newly emancipated blacks were
extremely naïve at best. History suggests that black labor had been one
of the most significant forces for America’s unparalleled industrialization
in the late nineteenth century. Therefore, a significant concern for the
nation as a whole was how to incorporate the former slaves peacefully
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into US society without disrupting the existing southern social, political
and economic order. Education was offered as the cure-all to this dilemma
referred to at the time as the “Negro Question.” The key however was it
had to be the right type of education that would preserve the peace (i.e. the
existing racist order) and transition the former slaves into an increasingly
productive free yet still laboring class. Hence, the curriculum forwarded
for black schools linked labor in tandem with education now infamously
known as the “Hampton Model” or the “Tuskegee idea”—a heavy emphasis
on industrial and moral and civic education with only rudimentary
measures of academic subjects. And subsequently this socially docile and
anapestic way of presenting HBCUs as non-revolutionary or subversive
spaces heavily depends upon the apolitical photographic representations
that this article critiques.
Some Early Examples
In the case of photographs and their relationship to the HBCU,
Frances Benjamin Johnston’s Hampton Institute photographs serve as a
starting point since these photographs “succeeded to an extraordinary
degree in making even the deep-lying rhetorical structure of her Hampton
images coincide with the dominant narrative” of post-Reconstruction
(Wexler 342-390). An examination of many of the photographs used to
promote HBCUs clearly demonstrates that nearly all of the photographers
and editors who attempted to promote these institutions were of the
“realist” strain when photographing the students, faculty, and staff. The
tradition and standard established by the Johnston photographs developed
in parallel with the commercialized and commoditized nature of the
American university in both its dominant and historically-black strains.
Some of the best-known of all the early photographs used to promote
HBCUs were those taken by Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952) in
1899 and 1900. Johnston, a white woman born to politically-connected
parents, initially trained as an artist in Paris and began photography in
the 1880s after improvements in camera and film technology made the
art form less of a specialized men’s practice and turned it into something
more accessible to women. By 1890, Johnston’s photographs were wellpublished, allowing her to open her own studio in Washington, D.C.
In December 1899, Hollis Burke Frissell commissioned Johnston to
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Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
demonstrate the success of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute
in Hampton, Virginia (Wexler 343). Her photographs were soon displayed
at the Exposé Nègre (Exhibit of [American] Negroes) at the Paris Exposition
Universelle in 1900. This same collection made its way back to America
and eventually became the Hampton Album displayed by the Museum of
Modern Art in New York.
When Johnston arrived at Hampton, the school enrolled over 1000
students (135 of them were Native American) and famously produced a
great percentage of the black teachers who taught children in the South.
Johnston, no doubt following the wishes of Frissell and other Hampton
administrators who commissioned her, presented Hampton through
photographs that “contrast the new life among the Negroes and Indians
with the old, and then show how Hampton has helped to produce change”
(Wexler 351). At least 159 prints were displayed in Paris of Hampton
students, alumni, and their offspring that showed them in various settings
in their homes, classrooms, around the grounds, and away from campus.
Students are shown receiving lectures both inside and outside in geography,
agriculture, “mechanical drawing,” and shoe making. Although little is
known about their reception in Paris, Wexler’s photographs were favorably
received and subsequently used for fundraising and promotional purposes
by the university and included in articles written by Booker T. Washington
on black education (Wexler 351). Johnston’s photographs visually
represented “the process that was supposed to change [black] students
from degraded slaves […] into self-respecting, self-supporting Americans”
(Guimond 30). The photographs make it clear that the change was, thanks
to the Hampton idea, immediate and without compromise or intermediacy;
the students had transcended “bondage” and “barbarism” instantaneously
and almost miraculously (Guimond 35). Modern commentators wrote that
the photographs illustrated the “triumphant advance of progress,” and a
“new dispensation of freedmen” among whom “the sobriety of a Quaker
ethic pervades her scenes like the mordant scent of fresh garden herbs” and
“stand as a metaphor or parable in their sturdy dreaminess, their selfless
absorption in self-improvement” (Kirstein 10). However these photographs
were received in Paris, New York, or by those who subsequently saw them
in magazines or university-published materials, all who viewed them were,
in essence, viewing a world manufactured by Johnston and her subjects
to demonstrate the “helpless yet not hopeless discrepancy in concept of
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Massified Illusions of Difference
the white Victorian ideal as criterion toward which all darker tribes and
nations must perforce aspire” (Kirstein 11).
Wexler points out that Johnston was careful to present Hampton as
a productive, relevant, in medias res institution that gelled with the turn-ofthe century popular perspective and ideology that “fondly believed that the
black man’s sufferings were over” (363). Wexler has argued that Johnston’s
“shooting script” stressed “black history as progress initiated by the action
of the Hampton Institute,” which were carefully demonstrated by her
carefully chosen photographic mise-en-scènes that stressed “achievement
over transition, accomplishment over struggle, and the gentler work of
elaboration over the brutal labor of beginning” (Wexler 353-354). In
this setting, Hampton became “much more attractive for…Americans to
believe that contemporary black life was like at Hampton than to attend to
evidence of catastrophic social disintegration such as the rising evidence of
lynching and other racial violence” (Wexler 362).
In total, Johnston’s images, staged but not necessarily “untrue,”
did not present “Hampton ‘as it was’ but Hampton as it had meaning
for the culture” (Wexler 363). Johnston’s photographs, as with nearly all
of the photographs in our study, worked in two distinct ways, none of
them notably “black” as they all stood on previously conceived notions
provided by the dominant culture. Firstly, as explained, they coincided
with the dominant, white narrative and mythology surrounding American
colleges and universities and allowed the HBCU being photographed to
participate, even if through illusion, with the greater promises offered by
higher education. Secondly, Johnston’s photographs inadvertently caused
Hampton to propagate the very narrative with which its white founders
sought inclusion, thus making it even more difficult for black institutions
to develop a distinct narrative of their own.
Examples and Their Relation to the “Mystique” of the HBCU
By deconstructing selected photographs used by HBCUs to promote
themselves, one can begin to understand the dichotomous nature of these
images. On one hand, they were designed to promote the unique aspects
of the HBCU, but on the other, they were hamstrung by the dominant
cultural messages understood by those who were meant to view them.
Although these photographs always feature blacks as prominent “details”
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(in terms of their Szarkowski classification) their “message” (in terms of
the Carter classification) is, more often than not, a message defined by
the dominant culture. Indeed, these photographs are constructed from the
outside-in, before the viewer has even laid eyes upon them. The question
this poses, however, is what, exactly were viewers relating to when they see
these types of photographs?
We have identified five messages that often appear in photographs
used by HBCUs that draw upon the mystique of the HBCU but also the
commoditized meaning of an image conveyed in its massified form. The five
photographs we have chosen each represent one of the themes, however,
in no way are these photographs exclusively limited to only conveying
one of the themes. The first of these themes centers on racial uplift and
black progress. When the picture is interpreted through this frame the
receiver is left with the sense that the very process of attending an HBCU
affords blacks deliverance from primitive ways of knowing and being.
The second centers on community assimilation, which happens within
the black community, but extends to the dominant community, as well.
Subsequently the picture clearly communicates to consumers who are the
intended assimilators (African Americans) and whose dominant beliefs
they are being assimilated to (European Americans). The third theme
Photograph courtesy Library of Congress, Washington DC
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concerns the “cultural massaging” that is offered by the HBCU in order to
give its attendees and graduates an air of respectability within the minority
and majority community. Fourthly, we see these pictorial representations
of HBCUs offer a homogenizing influence that stresses intellectual
and cultural orderliness, which allows both the institution and those
associated with both external and internal acceptability worthy of “higher
intellectual” pursuits. Finally, we believe that through this iconography
the HBCU attempts to illustrate that its students will have participatory
outlets within the university and surrounding community itself. This type
of participation upholds the ideal of the HBCU being integrated with its
surrounding community.
The first photograph, the oldest chronologically, is one from
Johnston’s Hampton Album and represents (“the thing,” among other
themes) homogenization and the orderliness it entails. There is little
doubt that this image, taken before the total massification of photography,
represents the most artistic of the five deconstructed in this study. This
photograph, as described by Wexler, was part of “a myth on the eve of its
explosion” (Wexler 362). As stated earlier, Johnston was a very deliberate
photographer that well-understood that her photographs would be
scrutinized on a world stage. The “frame” provided by Johnson within the
photograph, entitled “Teacher and Five Students Studying Insects in the
Laboratory,” are uniformed students (at least two of whom appear to be
Native Americans) within their classroom studying with a bearded, white
instructor who in a wise sage like manner shepherds the students through
their observations and subsequent recordings (this latter part encompasses
the “time” aspect of the photograph). The details of the photograph include
the uniformed students, instructor, chairs, table, desks, specimens, writing
tablet, floor, two hanging lights, walls, a wire mesh, bookshelves and
the bound volumes thereon, and the photographs on the wall above the
bookshelves. The vantage point chosen by Johnston is similar to one who
is directly observing and evaluating the class. Although this vantage point
is intimate, it leaves us to see the classroom as if we are occupying the
world apart, viewing as interested outsiders.
The stiffly-starched uniforms in tandem with the symmetrical room
décor (three tables, four pictures, and six bookcases) in the background
further emphasizes the orderliness and rigidly structured overtones that
the picture is intended to display. This air of intellectual and physical
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discipline is intended as a means to alleviate white fears that blacks would
revert back to an imagined pre-emancipation savage state that would
ultimately lead the ruin of the entire nation. Consequently education, and
specifically the right type of education, was seen as an indispensable part
of keeping blacks “civilized” and in line with prevailing economic, civil,
and social norms.
One theme that is constant in this and similar pictures of education
at HBCUs is the image of the black pupil at work with a Caucasian
instructor teaching, demonstrating, or supervising. In this photograph
there are six people in the picture, three of which are white and three
black. The centerpiece of the picture is the white professor instructing his
compliant black and Indian students while the other white men in the
room sit across the table observing. It is also worth noting that the black
students in the picture are all looking away from the camera; studious
and apt pupils engaged in their learning, impervious to distraction. The
anthropomorphized props intended to demonstrate the ability of an
HBCU education to homogenize or provide orderliness to the most unruly
members of the population—-black men. The fact that all of the subjects
are distinguished by their uniforms further emphasizes the implicit message
that under the proper discipline, former field hands could be transformed
into gentlemen and scientists. Furthermore, it is implied that HBCUs
can provide the structured environment necessary for this homogenizing
transformation. Photographic historian James Guimond opined that in
photograph such as these (there are others with similar mise en scenes),
Johnston “was able to imply that daily life at Hampton was serene, orderly,
and detailed--educationally ideal, in short--and that the students were
disciplined, patient, and attentive” (40). In our own analysis we conceive
of these mise en scènes specifically crafted to represent the pinnacle of black
cultural homogenization, since this picture was taken during an era when
a significant segment of the country did not consider blacks intelligent or
disciplined enough to be scientists or soldiers. In total, photographs such
as these represent a dynamic illustration of the power of the HBCU and its
ability to transform its students.
Within the second photograph is coded (the “thing itself”) the
mythical ideal of cultural massaging to give students an air of acceptability
and respectability. In this photograph, Dr. Burton Hurdle—a professor
and former chair of the Department of History and Philosophy at the
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Photograph Courtesy Virginia State University
Virginia State University—is framed within his office as he speaks with two
students circa 1980. Details include the well-dressed, but sensibly casual
professor, two students in casual (but not overly so) attire, and we presume
Dr. Hurdle’s books, desk, and other office accoutrements. Important are
the ways in which each member is standing. At this moment (the time),
the avuncular professor and students are obviously sharing a lighter
moment where the demands of school and academics are replaced by the
humanity and close connections between students and their professor.
This arrangement places the viewer in at an intimate vantage point, one in
which they are part of the casual conversation.
This picture depicts a fairly common image of two African American
students (male and female) and a European American professor (in tie and
sports jacket prominently displayed in the center of the two black students)
presumably in the professor’s office. Everything from the race and gender
of the participants to their placement in the picture, and dress is steeped in
the peculiar legacy of race and educational opportunity in American higher
education. Meaning black men and women have traditionally attended
coeducational institutions because the black community could not afford
to establish separate schools. Next, HBCUs have traditionally been led by
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Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
and employed a significant number of white faculty, hence, the picture
depicting a white professor clad in the trappings of professorship that oddly
seem to parallel the trappings of the corporate world. Centrality in the
picture, a red power tie and business attire locate whiteness and blackness
in a familiar proximity—whites the teachers and blacks the ones being
taught—despite the fact that the picture was taken in a predominantly
black setting.
Further, the fact that HBCUs (much like numerous other access
points into mainstream America) have historically been tied to white
philanthropy and control, affords numerous images of white-dominated
governing boards, administrations, and faculty (Anderson 23). From
penitentiaries (black inmates/white wardens) and professional sports
franchises (black athletes/white coaches) to entertainment ventures (black
rappers and actors/white owners) this image of black bodies under the
domain of burdened yet beneficent white leadership is a common trope
in American life. The point of this particular reading of this image is that
the legacy of white supremacy means that an all-black school with an allblack student body, faculty and administration lacks legitimacy. Hence,
the visibility of whites in specific positions on black campuses signals the
continued maintenance of the dominant white over black power dynamic.
Our point here is to not suggest that social, educational, and economic
uplift are not possible in these settings but we suggest that the supposed
Photograph Courtesy West Virginia State University
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uplift through education at HBCUs is packaged in such a way that just as
in the picture blacks are subservient to white genius.
This photograph, depicting students participating in a local “Negro”
4-H Camp circa 1950 is indicative of the community participation
promoted by the HBCU in order to ensure that both the students and
the university can connect with their surrounding community (and,
though extension, the larger world beyond). This type of connection is
important in that it solicits “town-and-gown” relations and ensures that the
institution has demonstrated its commitment to progress and modernity.
The details in the photograph present the students from the college, the
children participating in the 4-H camp, and various staff members. The
rustic meeting-house or dormitory in the background fits well within
the organization’s bucolic origins and focus. The students, in fact, do not
stand out from the crowd, and there are no banners, shirts, or anything
displayed that would indicate the college’s presence at all. Of course,
placed prominently in the background is the sign announcing that the
camp is designed for African American participation. We, as the viewer,
are observing the cordial relations and pride-in-participation of the entire
camp as they pose for the sake of posterity. In this position, we are, once
again, outside observers who are privileged to share in this moment if only
to feel as if we are a part of the revelry, even if only for a moment.
This picture depicts a group of African American adults and
adolescents that are participating in a 4-H camp that was hosted by Virginia
State College in the 1940s. The infamous Jim Crow era signage over the
heads of the individuals in the picture, “Negro 4-H Camp” does not so
much direct the viewer to the fact that the individuals in the picture are
black, because their racial and ethnic identity is for the most part readily
observable. But instead, the signage directs the reader to the fact that the
individuals being photographed are African American 4-Hers. While this
observation may seem on the surface fairly mundane 4-H camps established
for whites during this same era were not marked as “White 4-H Camps.”
Consequently, we found in this picture a visual representation of one of the
central themes of the article—that the representations of HBCUs through
these images provides a participatory outlet for blacks to become more
American. Moreover, the location of activities like 4-H camps on HBCU
campuses provided an outlet for African Americans to become more like
the dominant culture through their participation at HBCUs.
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Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
A cursory analysis of the 4-H’s website supports our analysis.
Describing the establishment and purpose of the organization the website
states:
The seed of the 4-H idea of practical and “handson” learning came from the desire to make public
school education more connected to country life
[…] During this time, researchers at experiment
stations of the land-grant college system and
USDA saw that adults in the farming community
did not readily accept new agricultural
discoveries. But, educators found that youth
would “experiment” with these new ideas and
then share their experiences and successes with
the adults […] 4-H began to extend into urban
areas in the 1950’s. Later, the basic 4-H focus
became the personal growth of the member. Life
skills development was built into 4-H projects,
activities and events to help youth become
contributing, productive, self-directed members
of society (“4-H History in Brief.”).
Hence 4-H set out to bridge old and young with rural and urban under
the auspices that the youth were more incorrigible. And subsequently that
their intimate relationship with adults, the powerbrokers in the community
would translate to their whole communities adoption of a specific vision
of a civil society; which, in turn, suggests that just as the founders of 4-H
intentionally used education to merge the binary between the rural and
urban, between luddites and advocates of technology, and even between
national and international interests at HBCUs. This meant the 4-H’s ability
to bring African Americans into, as they stated, “contributing, productive,
self-directed members of society” could be accomplished through HBCUs,
whose missions in general promised similar outcomes for its graduates.
This photograph featuring Irma Muse Dixon standing beside her
office as Director of the New Orleans Department of Property Management
taken in the late 1970, a few years after her graduation from Southern
University at New Orleans (SUNO). Ms. Dixon, who went on to earn a
Master of Social Work degree from Tulane University and who eventually
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Massified Illusions of Difference
Photograph Courtesy of Southern University at New Orleans
became a fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, went on
to serve as the undersecretary for the Louisiana Department of Culture,
the director of the New Orleans Department of Recreation, Bureau Chief
within the Louisiana Office of Employment Training and Development,
and furthered her career as a State Representative of Louisiana from 1988
to 1992. This image, taken in 1988, demonstrates some of the successes
to be found if one were to look among the approximately 5,000 graduates
from SUNO at that time. The photograph is simple—the thing is Ms.
Dixon and her office, portfolio in hand, well-dressed, and refined. Her
door is prominently labeled and the trappings of the office further the
sense of space. The viewer is but a passing observer, standing just long
enough to be acknowledged by the subject as she treads on to important
appointments.
The elements of this photograph send a powerful message concerning
successful appearances in America. Entry into the corporate world is
made possible by the trappings of higher education, a tradition in which
HBCUs fully participate. The dearth of women of color in governmental
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Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
and political spheres when this photograph was taken made this particular
depiction of Ms. Dixon taking her place in the higher echelons of American
political life a fetish object. It is no coincidence of all the graduates that
could have been selected to demonstrate success, this specific image was
considered most appealing. Why not a black female elementary teacher,
administrative assistant, or social worker?
This picture demonstrates institutional desires to provide an
avenue to community assimilation through stylized depictions of
success and respectability gained by accessing America-possible through
education at an HBCU. Everything from the subject’s professional attire
and accoutrements to her erect positioning in the picture communicates
her supervisory position even if the reader overlooks the title “Director”
prominently displayed on the door. Also, her leadership position
juxtaposed against the rarified reality of black women in positions of
power furthers an enduring trope about HBCUs; that they can convert
those on the farthest margins of social acceptability into closer proximity
to social respectability and economic stability. Hence, at the turn of the
nineteenth century this meant newly emancipated African Americans were
made civilized by education at schools like Tuskegee and Hampton and
today black women who were once considered only educable enough to
Photograph Courtesy of Fisk University
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Massified Illusions of Difference
be domestic workers can now become leaders in corporate America. The
problem with simulacrum that we are referring to as inclusion through
community assimilation, is that through these images and the discourses
that they establish the representation of success has little if anything to
do with black self-determination in an individual or communal sense.
Instead, the highest measure of the effectiveness of HBCUs for lack of a
better term is their ability to create black versions of the students that are
being produced at predominantly white schools—complete with corporate
aspirations regardless of their racial and gender identity.
This picture was taken in 1953 at Cravath Hall at Fisk University.
The “thing itself” the inaugural initiation of the Delta of Tennessee chapter
of The Phi Beta Kappa National Honor Society. Founded in December of
1776, Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest and most prestigious honors society in
America. The Delta of Tennessee chapter was chartered in 1952 and was
the first chartered at an HBCU. The details show the proud inductees,
their sponsors, and representatives from the national organization. All are
dressed in appropriate formal academic regalia and they are posed as if to be
conversing with each other in this intimate setting. As the observer, we are
placed within this intimate circle, and can almost listen in to the pride and
satisfaction felt by all. The fact that Fisk, often referred to as the “Harvard
of Black schools,” was worthy of a chapter (nearly two centuries after the
establishment of the organization) suggests the prevailing sentiment that
black higher education had finally arrived. However, on the other side of
the coin, this arrival was nearly two centuries behind that of white higher
education.
By chartering a chapter at the fabled Fisk University, the home
of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Talented Tenth (those educated to serve as the
vanguard of the race), Phi Beta Kappa lent its reputation to the school
of those who were responsible for the social and economic uplift of the
other ninety percent of African Americans. The idea that this communal
and individual uplift would occur as a result of participation in higher
education is an American ideal that crosses racial boundaries. However
the racist undercurrents surface when one considers that this training for
racial uplift had to be overseen by sage instructors that just so happened
to represent the old guard, which was predominantly male, middle-aged,
and entirely white to this point. The actual photograph demonstrates this
imbalance, featuring thirteen individuals: eleven men and two women,
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Bruce Makoto Arnold, Roland W. Mitchell, and Noelle Arnold
eleven of whom are white and the two new black initiates. The inclusion of
a co-educational membership is no small matter but it is also worth noting
that in the arrangement the women are in opposite corners and are less
prominently displayed. The theme of placing a white male as the central
figure in the picture is a mainstay and provides a visual representation that
all human logic and reason evolves from Anglo-Saxon men. Hence in the
end this picture represents the legitimating of the black intelligentsia at the
hands of white scholars.
Conclusion
As with the photographs of the Jubilee Singers, HBCUs immediately
and successfully seized upon the power of the massified image and the
many meanings that it conveyed. While the Singers and their music
may have been identifiably “Black,” their dress and comportment was
identifiably “white.” Since the dominant artistic representation of the
Black performing artist had been, up to that time had been the blackface
minstrel, there would have certainly been a loss of social capital if the
Singers would have attempted to change their dress and subsequent public
image to synchronize their visual personas with the slave heritage of the
Negro spiritual. While the Negro spiritual could be made acceptable, it was
the only aspect of the whole that could be safely co-opted by the primarily
white audience. Slave clothes, it seems, would not appeal to the visual
sensibilities of the Singers’ audiences. In the same vein, Frances Johnston’s
images explicitly demonstrated that both blacks and whites, alike, had a
limited range associated with that the HBCU was and was not supposed
to be. Historically Black colleges, then, quickly understood how they must
advertise themselves in order to survive as a minority institution.
There is no denying that the HBCU is largely responsible to itself
for its own perpetuation. Without students, donors, benefactors, parents,
and willing business and community allies, no university could exist.
Unlike the music of the Singers, the HBCU was acceptable only insofar as
it demonstrated that it was an institution that could communally uplift,
culturally assimilate, socially transform, and offer mainstream participatory
outlets to blacks who sought opportunity and acceptability in the dominant
society. However, this belies the fact that the HBCU has attempted to
set itself apart from white universities by surrounding themselves in a
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visible cloak of mythological difference centering on the mystique that the
black college is somehow different and somehow black. In fact, a studied
and structural analyses of the photographs used by HBCUs to promote
themselves to both the black culture and the surrounding dominant
culture indicates that their target is not, in fact, the internal black minority
community, but the external, majority white community. Other than their
skin color, the students and alumni depicted in these photographs, just like
the Singers, are modeled as idealized college students, not black students
in black institutions held to a different or unique standard. In effect, the
HBCU, through these types of photographs, massified itself as an entity
and appealed to students of African descent only through their skin color,
and not through any notably African or African-American characteristics,
including the mystique of the HBCU that is specifically targeted to those
seeking something other than what they could receive at dominant, white
institutions of higher education.
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