Ghosts of Segregation is a project by photographer Rich Frishman with the goal of documenting the “the vestiges of America’s racism evident in the built environment, hidden in plain sight: Schools for ‘colored’ children, theatre entrances and restrooms for ‘colored people,’ lynching sites, juke joints, jails, hotels and bus stations.” The top photo above is of a segregation wall in a restaurant in Texas photographed in 2017:
This partition was constructed in the early 20th Century to keep people of different races apart. It is decorated with an original pre-1929 Dr. Pepper logo. At the time of its construction (circa 1906) only Caucasian customers were allowed to sit in the front of the saloon. All Hispanic, Asian and African-American customers had to sit behind the wall. When the saloon was remodeled and re-opened in 2014 the wall, no longer used for its original purpose, was retained as a historical reminder. It has recently been demolished.
The bottom photo shows the “colored entrance” for a movie theater in Texas:
The enigmatic door atop the stairway on the south side of the Texan Theater, long locked and largely overlooked, is the “colored entrance,” a vestige of Jim Crow-era segregation. In Kilgore, Texas, the term “colored” extended to anyone not Caucasian, including Hispanics and the occasional Asian.
Also included in the project are photos of WWII internment camps (where persons of Japanese ancestry were held during WWII, many of them American citizens), the US/Mexico border wall, and the Stonewall Inn in NYC. You can see the full gallery here.
Tags: photography racism Rich Frishman USAfrom kottke.org https://ift.tt/3oZ4tCU
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