See 9 Striking Historical Photos of African American Women

  • Graduation portrait of Octavia C. Long June 1909.
    Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Naomi Long Madgett
    1 of 9
  • Leona Dean standing on a porch, 1919-1925.
    John Johnson—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Douglas Keister
    2 of 9
  • Four women working in a kitchen at the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth in Bordentown, NJ. A fifth, older woman oversees a younger as she ices a cake, 1935.
    Lewis Wickes Hine—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Howard and Ellen Greenberg
    3 of 9
  • Lena Horne backstage at the Chez Paree, May 1947.
    Wayne F. Miller—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Wayne Miller/Magnum Photos
    4 of 9
  • Helen Ann Smith at Harlem House, Beale St, Memphis, TN, 1950s.
    Ernest C. Withers—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Ernest C. Withers Trust
    5 of 9
  • Photograph of three women in a beauty pageant 1950s
    Rev. Henry Clay Anderson—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture
    6 of 9
  • Black Panthers from Sacramento, Free Huey Rally, Bobby Hutton Memorial Park, Oakland, CA, No. 62 August 25, 1968.
    Pirkle Jones—Collection of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of the Pirkle Jones Foundation, © 2011 Pirkle Jones Foundation
    7 of 9
  • A Woman Waiting in the Doorway, Harlem, 1976.
    Dawoud Bey—Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, © Dawoud Bey
    8 of 9
  • Coretta Scott King, Washington, DC, 1985.
    Thomas J. Shillea—Collection of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Santa Bannon-Shillea, © Thomas J. Shillea
    9 of 9
By Lily Rothman

The history of what it has meant to be black and female in the United States is not easily summed up—a point that the upcoming Smithsonian photo book African American Women makes plain. As Kinshasha Holman Conwill, deputy director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, points out in an introductory essay, the images in the book “[illuminate] a narrative that reflects large and small moments in U.S. history and culture.”

Famous faces like Lena Horne are presented alongside those whose personal stories are far less well known. Leona Dean, for example, lived a relatively prosperous life in the Midwest in the early 20th century—a place and time that has been largely eclipsed in the national memory. “We made a point of choosing images of people who aren’t famous,” says Michèle Gates Moresi, the museum’s supervisory curator of collections. “They aren’t known as leaders, but they were to their communities.”

The book is part of the Double Exposure series from the National Museum of African American History and Culture; the first installment in the series was released earlier this year and both African American Women and Civil Rights and the Promise of Equality will be released on July 7.

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com.

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