National Portrait Gallery
8th and G Streets, NW
Washington, DC
On view are 50 portraits of black Americans by Carl Van Vechten, noted author, critic, and photographer. The recent acquisitions, dating from the 1930s through the 1960s, range from a woman doing laundry to images of well-known personalities, including Marian Anderson, W.E.B. DuBois, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia Jackson, and Paul Robeson. The title of the exhibition is taken from the title of a spiritual of the Underground Railroad—the system established to aid fugitive slaves to escape from the South before the Civil War.