[African Americana]: [Texas]:

[Vernacular Photograph Album and Scrapbook Documenting Life at Wiley College in the Mid-20th Century].

[Mainly Tyler and Marshall, TX: 1928-1966]. [24] leaves, illustrated with thirty-two original photographs, plus two manuscript letters with original transmittal envelopes, numerous periodical clippings, some printed photographs, programs, and assorted ephemera. Quarto. Contemporary photograph album bound in crimson leatherette, comb-bound, with "Photographs" in white ink on front cover and the words "Wiley College" added in black marker. Minor wear, very well preserved. Very good plus. Item #6111

A delightful assortment of original photographs, letters, and ephemera memorializing university life at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas in the mid-20th century. The material includes over thirty original photographs capturing college-aged men and women in a variety of single and group portraits, along with numerous clippings of photographs taken from college handbooks and other sources featuring officials and employees of Wiley College over the years. Most of the original photographs appear to emanate from as early as the 1920s to the 1940s; a couple of later photographs, perhaps from the 1950s, feature African American servicemen. The photographs are supplemented by a variety of ephemeral items, including additional clippings from handbooks, yearbooks, and programs featuring scenes of the Wiley campus, programs for various African-American events in Texas and Virginia, a few ephemeral items relating to African-American sororities, and clippings of newspaper stories on other African Americans or Black-centered stories, some with ties to Wiley and some without. Among the material mounted in the album are two manuscript letters, both sent to long-time Tyler-area educator Katie Albert Stewart from correspondents at Wiley College.

Katie Albert Stewart was born in Helena, Arkansas in 1901, and passed away in Tyler in 2006 at the age of 104. She graduated from Tyler Colored High School, East Texas Academy, Prairie View A & M (B.A.), and Atlanta University (M.A.). She was a longtime educator in Tyler, teaching at the Emmett J. Scott School, Tyler Junior College, and elsewhere.  It is likely that whomever assembled the present album was a friend of Stewart's and asked her for any letters she had received from Wiley over the years. Marshall and Tyler, Texas are just an hour's drive from each other, and Stewart, being an educator, likely knew numerous people associated with Wiley College.

Price: $1,750