Palmer Memorial Institute, Sedalia, North Carolina, 1946-1947

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Access note. Collection contains fragile audiovisual/photographic formats. Digital viewing files for all negative images are available through this collection guide.

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From the series: Scanned still image negatives, 1946-1949

Access restricted. Original nitrate negatives are closed to use. Digitized copies are available for use. Contact Research Services with questions.

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Extent:
124 items
Scope and content:

The Palmer Memorial Institute (PMI) was an African American preparatory school for junior and senior students, and was attended by more than 1,000 students from 1902 until it closed in 1971. In 1946 and 1947, Griff Davis visited the school, documenting daily student life at PMI for a 1947 photo-essay in Ebony magazine. A copy of this article is in the Photographs and Papers series.

The images show students in class and enjoying extra-curricular programs and recreation; school administrators, including President and founder Charlotte Hawkins Brown; and teachers.

Positive scans of the negative images are available for viewing through the links with each entry.

Biographical / historical:

The founder of Palmer Memorial Institute, Charlotte Hawkins Brown (1883–1961) was born in Henderson, North Carolina, and raised and educated in Massachusetts. Brown named the Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute (PMI) in Sedalia, North Carolina, after her mentor and benefactor, the second woman president of Wellesley College. Brown raised funds to expand campus facilities and worked to strengthen PMI's artistic and scholarly offerings, and through her efforts, the school evolved from an agricultural and manual training facility to a fully accredited, nationally recognized African American preparatory school for junior and senior high school students. In 1987 the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum opened on the PMI grounds as North Carolina's first African American state historic site.

[Source: Adapted from the National Park Service website on a traveling exhibition of Griff Davis photographs of PMI, viewed July 1, 2021]

Processing information:

Many titles for these images were transcribed from a title list in the collection created by Griff Davis in the 1980s. Others were transcribed from captions in the publication where the images appeared. Some titles and captions have been extrapolated by library staff from similar titled images or from image content.

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Collection restrictions:

Access note. Some materials in this collection are digitized audiovisual materials that require special equipment. Contact Research Services with questions.

Access restricted. Original nitrate negatives are closed to use. Negatives have been digitized and use copies are available. Contact Research Services for more information.

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