Past Forward
Kimberly Henderson ’13 is digitally extending the reach of historic imageryBy Meg Whalen
Photos by Hanna Wondmagegn
The first census to acknowledge Emaline Davis McCracken by name was in 1870. A 30-year-old “farm laborer,” she had lived her whole life in South Carolina, but it took the Emancipation Proclamation, a bloody Civil War and the 14th Amendment to change her status from property to personhood.
Kimberly Henderson ’13 discovered Emaline, her great-great-great-great grandmother, by searching backward, and then forward, in time. An amateur genealogist, Henderson was researching her father’s family, tracing her roots generation by generation.
“I would get to the 1800s, and they would start to disappear,” she said. The experience was a striking contrast to earlier investigations of her mother’s ancestors, who were of mixed African, European and Native American heritage and had owned land in the North Carolina Piedmont since well before the Civil War. Henderson became frustrated by the lack of historical records.
“And then it hit me: They were enslaved. It was a thing to reckon with.” She had to turn from “the anonymity of enslavement” to the 1870 Census, the first in which African Americans appear as citizens, to find Emaline.
Henderson is the digital curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, an internationally renowned cultural institution in the New York Public Library system. And though her career there began 150 years after the U.S. Census named her paternal ancestors, it has been tilled, sown and nurtured by Emaline Davis McCracken as surely as the South Carolina soil Emaline worked.
Personal passion emerges from pandemic interruption
Henderson majored in studio art at UNC Charlotte, with minors in women’s and gender studies and psychology. An internship at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation led to a full-time job, and Henderson worked there for a few years after graduation. But she yearned for the Big Apple, motivated by a Department of Art and Art History field trip she had taken as a student.
“That was my first time in New York, and I was just so inspired,” said Henderson. “I was like, I want to live in that place.”
So in 2015 she headed north, working first for the public radio show, “This American Life,” and then the Margaret Thatcher Projects contemporary art gallery in Manhattan.
Henderson, who started exploring Duke University’s digital collection of photographs by the itinerant portraitist Hugh Mangum, said, “I had never seen such a wealth of everyday Black people photographed from the 1800s and early 1900s.”
When the pandemic broke out in March 2020, Henderson left New York City and moved home to Durham, North Carolina, to complete a master’s degree in library and information sciences from Syracuse University online. One day, she started browsing Duke University’s digital collection of photographs by the itinerant portraitist Hugh Mangum. From 1890 until his death in 1922, Mangum photographed unidentified white and African American men, women and children in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
“I had never seen such a wealth of everyday Black people photographed from the 1800s and early 1900s,” Henderson said. She was inspired both by the accessibility of digitized imagery and by the portraits themselves and decided to start an Instagram account where she would curate and post archival portraits “as a way to honor my own ancestors and this idea of the collective Black American ancestry.” She named the project and Instagram account “Emaline and ‘nem.”
It was April 5, 2020, when Henderson posted her first photographs. “I thought if I had 500 followers by October, I would keep doing it. By June I had 11,000. I realized this is so much bigger than me.”
Henderson’s Instagram account, with 45,000-plus followers, features historical photos of Black Americans typically attract more than a thousand “likes” and dozens of comments.
Now, the account has more than 45,000 followers, and the posts — historical photographs that show Black Americans in their silk skirts and feathered hats, their baseball and football uniforms, their choir robes and fur coats — typically attract more than a thousand “likes” and dozens of comments.
“It became this beautiful interaction,” stated Henderson.
Dear Yesteryear
In February 2021, Henderson moved back to New York City to begin her work at the Schomburg Center, where she facilitates projects “that digitally highlight our 11 million archival collection materials.” Digital access has become part of her “personal mission.”
“Emaline and ‘nem” (colloquial for “Emaline and them”) has opened other doors for her, too. Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones messaged Henderson on Instagram, seeking assistance curating photos for the book, “1619 Project.” Henderson’s selected photos illustrate 17 of the book’s 18 essays.
“It was an incredible experience,” she said.
And just a few months after Henderson launched her archival image project and named it for her great-great-great-great grandmother, an editor at Penguin Random House emailed her to propose a children’s book based on the Instagram account.
“I thought to myself, what would this book be? The people in these photographs are someone’s ancestors. One thing I’d like to do is talk to these people and talk to my ancestors.”
The result is “Dear Yesteryear,” published by Penguin Random House’s Dial Books for Young Readers in March 2023. For the book, which has been praised as “moving and profound,” “inspiring” and “ingenious,” Henderson chose 43 photographs and wrote a lyrical letter to their subjects.
Next, she’ll turn her attention to developing a related exhibition. And she’ll keep honoring her own and the collective Black ancestry through “Emaline and ‘nem.”
“I still find photographs that amaze me.”
Meg Whalen is director of communications for the College of Arts + Architecture.
PAST FORWARD
By Meg Whalen
Photos by Hanna Wondmagegn
The first census to acknowledge Emaline Davis McCracken by name was in 1870. A 30-year-old “farm laborer,” she had lived her whole life in South Carolina, but it took the Emancipation Proclamation, a bloody Civil War and the 14th Amendment to change her status from property to personhood.
Kimberly Henderson ’13 discovered Emaline, her great-great-great-great grandmother, by searching backward, and then forward, in time. An amateur genealogist, Henderson was researching her father’s family, tracing her roots generation by generation.
“I would get to the 1800s, and they would start to disappear,” she said. The experience was a striking contrast to earlier investigations of her mother’s ancestors, who were of mixed African, European and Native American heritage and had owned land in the North Carolina Piedmont since well before the Civil War. Henderson became frustrated by the lack of historical records.
“And then it hit me: They were enslaved. It was a thing to reckon with.” She had to turn from “the anonymity of enslavement” to the 1870 Census, the first in which African Americans appear as citizens, to find Emaline.
Henderson is the digital curator at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, an internationally renowned cultural institution in the New York Public Library system. And though her career there began 150 years after the U.S. Census named her paternal ancestors, it has been tilled, sown and nurtured by Emaline Davis McCracken as surely as the South Carolina soil Emaline worked.
Personal passion emerges from pandemic interruption
Henderson majored in studio art at UNC Charlotte, with minors in women’s and gender studies and psychology. An internship at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation led to a full-time job, and Henderson worked there for a few years after graduation. But she yearned for the Big Apple, motivated by a Department of Art and Art History field trip she had taken as a student.
“That was my first time in New York, and I was just so inspired,” said Henderson. “I was like, I want to live in that place.”
So in 2015 she headed north, working first for the public radio show, “This American Life,” and then the Margaret Thatcher Projects contemporary art gallery in Manhattan.
Henderson, who started exploring Duke University’s digital collection of photographs by the itinerant portraitist Hugh Mangum, said, “I had never seen such a wealth of everyday Black people photographed from the 1800s and early 1900s.”
When the pandemic broke out in March 2020, Henderson left New York City and moved home to Durham, North Carolina, to complete a master’s degree in library and information sciences from Syracuse University online. One day, she started browsing Duke University’s digital collection of photographs by the itinerant portraitist Hugh Mangum. From 1890 until his death in 1922, Mangum photographed unidentified white and African American men, women and children in North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
“I had never seen such a wealth of everyday Black people photographed from the 1800s and early 1900s,” Henderson said. She was inspired both by the accessibility of digitized imagery and by the portraits themselves and decided to start an Instagram account where she would curate and post archival portraits “as a way to honor my own ancestors and this idea of the collective Black American ancestry.” She named the project and Instagram account “Emaline and ‘nem.”
It was April 5, 2020, when Henderson posted her first photographs. “I thought if I had 500 followers by October, I would keep doing it. By June I had 11,000. I realized this is so much bigger than me.”
Henderson’s Instagram account, with 45,000-plus followers, features historical photos of Black Americans typically attract more than a thousand “likes” and dozens of comments.
Now, the account has more than 45,000 followers, and the posts — historical photographs that show Black Americans in their silk skirts and feathered hats, their baseball and football uniforms, their choir robes and fur coats — typically attract more than a thousand “likes” and dozens of comments.
“It became this beautiful interaction,” stated Henderson.
Dear Yesteryear
In February 2021, Henderson moved back to New York City to begin her work at the Schomburg Center, where she facilitates projects “that digitally highlight our 11 million archival collection materials.” Digital access has become part of her “personal mission.”
“Emaline and ‘nem” (colloquial for “Emaline and them”) has opened other doors for her, too. Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones messaged Henderson on Instagram, seeking assistance curating photos for the book, “1619 Project.” Henderson’s selected photos illustrate 17 of the book’s 18 essays.
“It was an incredible experience,” she said.
And just a few months after Henderson launched her archival image project and named it for her great-great-great-great grandmother, an editor at Penguin Random House emailed her to propose a children’s book based on the Instagram account.
“I thought to myself, what would this book be? The people in these photographs are someone’s ancestors. One thing I’d like to do is talk to these people and talk to my ancestors.”
The result is “Dear Yesteryear,” published by Penguin Random House’s Dial Books for Young Readers in March 2023. For the book, which has been praised as “moving and profound,” “inspiring” and “ingenious,” Henderson chose 43 photographs and wrote a lyrical letter to their subjects.
Next, she’ll turn her attention to developing a related exhibition. And she’ll keep honoring her own and the collective Black ancestry through “Emaline and ‘nem.”
“I still find photographs that amaze me.”
Meg Whalen is director of communications for the College of Arts + Architecture.