Balch Institute: Selections from the Museum Collections
From Exclusion to Inclusion
Image Archive

The Man Holding The Liberator (1848), attributed to Joseph Whiting Stock, New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Museum purchase. Oil on canvas. (30" x 25"). AA.73.18.
Abolitionists focused their reform efforts on the emancipation of enslaved African Americans. They disseminated information on the heinous conditions of slavery through papers such as the Liberator, started by William Lloyd Garrison in 1831. The identity of the sitter is unknown; possible subjects include African-American abolitionists Frederick Douglass, Charles Lenox Remond, and William Whipper.

The Lure of a Woman.
Library Transfer. Poster. (81" x 40-1/2", in 3 sections). AA.75.470.a-c.
African-American films were a product of the segregated environment, and their content was often a reaction to discrimination. The Colored Players Film Corporation opened its Temple Studios in Philadelphia in 1927. Its pictures tended to reflect the lifestyle and social situations of the African-American middle class of the period. Rather than dealing explicitly with issues of prejudice and discrimination, these films dealt indirectly with racial issues by depicting African Americans in positive roles, countering the stereotypes portrayed by major motion pictures.

"Rest Rooms" sign. Museum Purchase. (4" x 12"). AA.87.114.
"Sappy's Barber Shop" sign. Museum Purchase. (11" x 11"). AA.91.140.
Slavery was abolished with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, but discrimination, racial inequality, and persecution of African Americans and other groups continued. The United States Supreme Court gave assent to segregation in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed "seperate but equal" facilities for Blacks and Whites until it was reversed in 1954. The sign indicating segregated rest rooms probably came from a train station in Tennessee. 

Pin.
Library Transfer. (5/8"). IM.86.215.2.
This pin dates from the Americanization movement of the early part of this century. The movement was strongly influenced by popular anthropological notions of the day which considered southern and eastern Europeans to be racially different from and innately inferior to the Anglo-Saxons they were urged to emulate.

Americans All, by Howard Chandler Christy (1919), and Remember Your First Thrill of AMERICAN LIBERTY (1917). Source unknown.
Posters: (30" x 20") IM.87.389; and (39-1/4" x 26-1/2") AMR.89.76.
With the entry of the United States into the Great War in 1917, unifying the many groups who had arrived in large numbers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries became important to the national cause. Loyalty to the war effort and to the ideals of liberty and opportunity became the mark of assimilation. While these posters represent Europeans from Italy, Russia, Greece, Spain and other nations, they do not embrace peoples of color as participants in American unity.

Food Will Win the War, by the U.S. Food Administration (c. 1943-45). Source unknown.
Poster in English, Yiddish, and Italian. (30" x 20"). Amr.89.98; JE.89.289; and IT.89.97.
Posters used images of the Statue of Liberty, and of immigrants arriving in America, to inspire new arrivals to support the war effort. The Statue became a national symbol equal to the flag.

Chest of drawers (c. 1942).
Gift of Mrs. Ichyo Nakai. (19-3/4" x 15" x 9-1/2"). J.82.17.
This wooden chest of drawers was fashioned by the donor's husband from an apple crate found in Poston Relocation Center in Arizona. He decorated the chest himself in traditional motifs, adding the glass handles after the war. In the sparse accommodations of the camps the evacuees tried to create some semblance of community. Many turned to traditional Japanese crafts for spiritual sustenance. Furnishings were created from scraps of wood and metal collected around the camp. Old saws and worn files, automobile springs, and discarded metal were improvised into tools.

Topaz Relocation Center Waterc olor by Toshio Asaeda (1944).
Gift of Sumiko Kobayashi. (11-3/4" x 14-3/4"). J.85.271.
The War Relocation Authority, which supervised the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast during World War II, built ten relocation centers in isolated areas of seven western States. Each had a capacity of eight to twelve thousand internees. Unvarying in design and structure and under armed guard, these camps consisted of mess halls, combined washroom-laundry facilities, and rows of tarpaper-covered barracks. In this painting the snow-capped peaks of the Utah mountains rise beyond the barbed wire of Topaz Relocation Center. Coal for warming the barracks in the cold desert winter was piled in the streets.

Shell jewelry (c. 1943-1945). Gift of Muriel Shapp.
Wooden box: (3-5/8" x 2-1/8" x 1-3/8") J.91.189.1.
Pin: (1-1/8" x 1-1/2" x 5/8") J.91.189.2.
Hair ornament: (5" x 1-3/4" x 1") J.91.189.15.
Brooch: (2-3/4" x 2-1/2" x 3/4") J.91.189.16.
In the desert surrounding the Topaz (Utah) and Tule Lake (California) centers, internees found shells left from the sea that covered the land millions of years ago. Camp residents collected the shells, bleached and painted them, and glued them together to form delicate floral jewelry. Mass-produced hair clips were transformed by clamshell cherry blossoms and other native Japanese flowers. The donor worked as a teacher in Topaz Relocation Center. She bought pieces of shell jewelry at the craft shows residents held in the mess halls. The pin in the wooden box was a gift to her from the young man whose picture it contains. The donor remembers wearing shell pins to dances organized by the young people whom she taught.

Autographed shirt (1942).
Gift of Sunkie Oye. J. 87.250.
This shirt was presented to Ryusuke Tazumi by his fellow internees in Santa Fe as he departed to join his family at the Poston Relocation Center in Arizona. The camp in Santa Fe was for Japanese-American leaders, who were separated from their neighbors because the government considered them a greater risk to national security. The men eventually were released to join their families at the ten other relocation centers. This gift was autographed by Ryusuke Tazumi's friends in Japanese calligraphy. Signing a piece of clothing as a farewell gift was common both in Japan and among Japanese Americans.

Suitcases (1943).
Gift of Sumiko Kobayashi. (12-1/2" x 26 x 7") J.87.387; and (14-1/2" x 28" x 8") J.87.388.
The Japanese Americans of the designated "Exclusion Areas" were given a week's notice before they were to report to one of fifteen Temporary Assembly Centers. There they awaited completion of more permanent camps in the desert interior. The internees were permitted to bring only what they could carry to their new accommodations. All their remaining belongings were placed in storage, rented out, or sold at "evacuation sales." These suitcases were purchased by the Kobayashi family of San Leandro, California, before leaving for the Tanforan Assembly Center, south of San Francisco. The luggage held all the belongings that the family later carried to the Topaz Relocation Center in south central Utah.

United We Win, by Liberman/War Manpower Comission (1943). Source unknown.
Poster. (27-3/4" x 22"). ME.89.197.
When the world wars slowed immigration from Europe, labor shortages opened employment to women and gave African Americans access to jobs previously reserved for whites. Many Blacks migrated from the South during both wars, seeking new opportunities in northern factories and defense work. During World War II, African Americans under the leadership of union official A. Philip Randolph pressured President Roosevelt to issue an executive order against discrimination in war industries and to create the Fair Employment Practices Commission in 1941. Afterward African Americans found some of the best employment opportunities in the defense industry.

Beat Back the Hun (c. 1914-1918).
Museum Purchase. Poster. (30" x 20"). G.90.157.
When the United States entered World War I, respected German-American citizens suddenly became associated with the enemy. A propaganda campaign was mounted against all things German. The German language was dropped from many schools, and patriotic groups sought to ban its use in public. Groups and individuals with German names changed them to protect themselves and their families. Across the country countless German Americans were persecuted and one was lynched, as the nation debated the loyalty of "hyphenated Americans." Tales of atrocities, implied in this poster, fed the anti-German hysteria, but they were largely fabricated or exaggerated by English and French propagandists.

Census posters (1990).
Gift of the National Archives. (21" x 17") AA.90.138; (22" x 35") ES.90.141; (35" x 24") LT.90.143; and (22" x 17") J.90.146, V.90.147 and AME.90.148.
These posters reflect efforts by the United States Census Bureau to include all ethnic groups in the 1990 census. Designed to speak with pride to each group in its own language and with its own cultural images, the posters encourage members of groups which historically have been undercounted or unacknowledged to be counted as Americans.

Korean street sign (1986).
Gift of the Philadelphia Department of Streets. (6" x 48"). K.90. 49.
Korean-language street signs were put up along the Fifth Street business district in Olney by the Korean American Association. Olney, a Philadelphia neighborhood which had been largely German and Irish, recently has experienced a confluence of many other groups, including Koreans, Portuguese, and Puerto Ricans. The signs were intended to assist older Korean immigrants who could not read English. But many non-Korean residents, who had not been consulted, viewed them as a signal that Koreans were "taking over the neighborhood." Most of the signs were vandalized and the city soon had them removed.

Poster and protest sign (1980s).
Gift of the Concerned Citizens of North Camden. (22" x 15-5/8") ME.91.190.b and (26" x 20") ME.91.193.f.
Organized in the early 'eighties, this advocacy organization addresses community issues, from improving the neighborhood to preventing construction of a second prison in the area. The poster, incorporating the colors of the U.S., Puerto Rican and pan-African flags, pays tribute to the ethnic groups that have joined together in North Camden, New Jersey.

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