Vernacular Photograph Album of the Rogers Family of Mamaroneck, Westchester County, New York, 1933-1937

oblong quarto, photograph album, containing 96 black and white snapshots mounted on 17 black paper leaves, images identified and captioned either in white pencil, or, in ink on the image itself, album worn, several missing images, lacking covers, some leaves dogeared, some staining, else good.

The images detail the lives of the Rogers family, an African American family of Mamaroneck, Westchester, New York, as well as additional members of the African American Community of Mamaroneck and Rye, New York.There are images of Rene Rogers and her husband, the often dapper W. Harrison Rogers, who was likely a chauffeur for a D.S. Weiskopf, who in 1931 purchased the large estate of John Rogers Hegeman, formerly of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, there are two images related to Weisskopf, and his large automobile, both at his estate and at the Westchester-Biltmore Country Club in Rye, New York. There are images of the Rogers, extended family members in and around Westchester County, the A.M.E. Zion Church of Mamaroneck, founded by an escaped slave named Robert Purdy.

There are also images taken by the Rogers while traveling, in Pennsylvania, New York City, the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1933, at an all-black beach, Harrison Rogers and other family in Charlevoix, Michigan, out west, The Boulder Dam, California, including Monterrey, San Francisco and Los Angeles, where additional Rogers family members had moved, including a B. H. Rogers. Cross country travel for African Americans during the 1930s would have been extremely difficult, for a variety of reasons, all involving the endemic racism of the era, sundown towns, segregation, lack of accommodations for African Americans, etc.