[Cabinet Card of an African-American Mother and Children in Rural Kansas]

Salina, Ks: Atherton & Hopkins, 1900. Very good.. Cabinet card photograph, 5.5 x 4 inches, on a slightly larger studio mount printed "Atherton & Hopkins Salina, Kans." Minor edge wear, small "X" handwritten above one subject's head within the image, a few small paper remnants to verso. A striking image of an African-American family of six, a mother and five children, living in Kansas around the last decade of the 19th century. The African-American population in Kansas grew in the 1880s as families left the South to escape the rollback of Reconstruction-era protections. African Americans settled across Kansas, largely in the eastern states. The present photograph was taken in Salina, in central Kansas, about a hundred miles from either Wichita or Topeka. Images of African-American families in Kansas in the 19th century are exceedingly rare.