Photo Album Compiled by an African American Teacher at Toadlena Boarding School in New Mexico

New Mexico and Elsewhere: Circa 1960s. Orange photo album binding titled "Toadlena Boarding School" in marker to spine, measuring 11.5 x 11", containing 95 black and white and color photos placed onto sticky album leaves bound with three rings. A photo album compiled by an African American woman who taught at the Toadlena Boarding School, a small Bureau of Indian Affairs operated boarding school in New Mexico. The compiler was part of a growing movement of African American teachers to the Indian Schools in the 1960s, when "Indigenous land, Black labor, and racialized education intersected across six generations, culminating in an earlier migration to Navajoland, when hundreds of African American educators staffed Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding and day schools after Brown v. Board of Education ended de jure segregated schools across the U.S. South" (Johnson Jr, "Recruited to Teach the Indians: An African American Genealogy of Navajo Nation Boarding Schools"). In all, the album contains roughly 24 photographs the compiler took while working at Toadlena, including two group photos of the school's staff showing her as one of three African American women working at the school. Other images show the compiler's class, including classroom scenes showing the classroom wall as decorated by the compiler. The remaining images were taken in the compiler's home state, and consist of family photos and a few photos showing African Americans in a classroom. We were unable to identify the compiler, as only a few of the images are captioned, though her name may have been Vera. Some of the photos appear to be captioned on the backs but we did not risk removing them. Wear to album with rear hinge cracked. Item #15302

Price: $1,250.00