Celebration of A True Likeness: The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts 1920-1936

Please join the Columbia Museum of Art & the University of South Carolina Press
for a panel discussion celebrating the new edition of A True Likeness: The Black South of Richard Samuel Roberts 1920-1936

with editors Thomas L. Johnson and Phillip C. Dunn
Historic Columbia’s Research and Archives Manager Katharine Allen
Director of the Center for Civil Rights History and Research at the
University of South Carolina Bobby Donaldson
Moderated by CMA Director of Education and Engagement Jackie Adams
Followed by a book signing

A True Likeness showcases the extraordinary photography of Richard Samuel Roberts (1880–1935), who operated a studio in Columbia, South Carolina, from 1920 to 1935. He was one of the few major African American commercial photographers working in the region during the first half of the twentieth century, and his images reveal the social, economic, and cultural realities of the black South and document the rise of a small but significant southern black middle class.

The nearly two hundred photographs in A True Likeness were selected from three thousand glass plates that had been stored for decades in a crawl space under the Roberts home. The collection includes “true likenesses” of teachers, preachers, undertakers, carpenters, brick masons, dressmakers, chauffeurs, entertainers, and athletes, as well as the poor, with dignity and respect and an eye for character and beauty.