A fire starts around midnight in the dormitory at a tiny private college. A twenty-three-year-old employee who lives on the first floor of the building is awakened and, disregarding warnings to vacate the building, heroically risks his life to alert the sleeping students in the upper floors. As a consequence, most of those students survive by jumping out the windows of their rooms, but the employee is so badly burned that he dies the following day. The college’s cause-and-origin investigation determines that the fire originated in a first-floor closet of the building, where combustibles consisting of cloths saturated with paint and linseed oil from a recent painting project were stored. The source of ignition, however, is unclear but officially reported to be spontaneous combustion, not arson. By any standard, the incident is a tragedy. Serious injury and death of young people. Parents worried and grieving. National media coverage. The future of the college at risk.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, creating a photographic portrait required substantial artistic and technical skill and a wide array of specialized equipment. At the same time, the act of posing for a portrait was an event in and of itself—it was an opportunity for people to make meaningful visual statements about themselves, their families, and their communities. When those living in rural Fayette County, Alabama, and the surrounding area wanted to have their photographs taken, they did not need to travel to a photo studio in town. Instead, they could simply visit the Shackelford family. Mitch and Geneva Shackelford, along with their adult children, were multi-talented African American artists who were well known throughout Fayette County as prominent members of the small community of Covin. Like so many in the region, the family made its living primarily as farmers. However, the Shackelfords also worked as commercial photographers. Between 1900 and 1935, various members of the family produced more than 850 glass negatives now housed at the Birmingham Public Library Archives.
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