Most photographs and paintings of women of color in the 19th century US — as well as in other slave economies of the period – portray the conditions of slavery. The site downtownlalife collected a series of photographs of handsome and powerful free black women, mostly identified in family albums. The collection was replicated by the web publication Everyday Feminism. In both sites the observation is made that one main caveat of the collection is that it has not been possible to recover the names of the photographed women except in a few cases.
With that limitation in mind enjoy the collection