Schools for the Colored is an extension of the ideas that formed the project Small Towns, Black Lives, in that, it is a continuation of my journey through the African American landscape. I began making photographs of historically African American school buildings during the very first weeks of the Small Towns, Black Lives project more than thirty years ago. In Schools for the Colored, I began to pay attention to the many structures and sites (also making photographs of places where segregated schools once stood) that operated as segregated schools.
The architecture and geography of America’s educational apartheid, in the form of a system of “colored schools,” within the landscape of southern New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois is the central concern of this project.
Prints from this portfolio are available in one size, in an edition of fifteen. The entire project (fifty works) is also framed, crated, and available for exhibition. A limited-edition book including all of the photographs from the portfolio was available (sold out) from Push Pull Editions. Nueva Luz dedicated an entire issue to this project with essays by Dawoud Bey and Victor Davson, back issues are still available.
