[West Coast African-American Vernacular Family Photograph Album with Manuscript Index of Photos]

[Various locations, 1955. Very good.. [9] leaves, illustrated with twenty-nine photographs, various sizes between 3 x 2 inches and 9.5 x 7.5 inches, with a manuscript index at front identifying the subjects. Later blue-green limp vinyl album with self adhesive pages. Minor wear and soiling. Photographs in generally nice condition. An interesting family photograph album assembled by a later-20th-century descendant of an African-American family with ties to Howard University, Alcorn College, and the West Coast. The photographs are mostly studio portraits of various kinds (sepia-toned, black-and-white, hand-tinted) featuring distinguished African-American men, women, and children. The photographs are arranged in number order and keyed to a handwritten list at the front of the album, identifying each subject and occasionally including brief additional information about some of them. Most of the photographs also have a date written near them on each album page. The photographs seem to center on two woman (probably sisters) named Olga Williams Roby and Alma Williams Greene; the album includes two photos of Olga and multiple images of Alma, and there are photographs inscribed to each of the women here. Olga apparently lived on the West Coast, as the earlier of her two photographs is noted in California and the later in Seattle in 1940. One of Alma's photographs features her while at Alcorn College. There are also multiple images of Dr. Clifton Nelson (one at Howard University). Four of the photographs are noted as emanating from the various subjects' time at Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University) in Mississippi. This, combined with a final page of photographs featuring family friends, one of which pictures a house in Greenwood, Mississippi, indicates the larger family probably emanated from Mississippi. The fact that several of the subjects attended college, combined with Olga's life on the West Coast, indicates at least part of this family participated in the Great Migration.