Wendel White

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Schools for the Colored

In W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk he describes an early school experience, “… I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.”

Schools for the Colored is an extension of the ideas that formed the project Small Towns, Black Lives, in that; it is a continuation of my journey through the African American landscape. I began making photographs of historically African American school buildings during the very first weeks of the Small Towns, Black Lives project more than twenty years ago. In Schools for the Colored I began to pay attention to the many structures and sites (also making photographs of places where segregated schools once stood) that operated as segregated schools.

These photographs depict the buildings and landscapes that were associated with the system of racially segregated schools established at the southern boundaries of the northern United States. This area, sometimes referred to as “Up-South,” encompasses the northern “free” states that bordered the slave states. Schools for the Colored is the representation the duality of racial distinction within American culture. The “veil” (the digital imaging technique of obscuring the landscape surrounding the schools) is a representation of DuBois’ concept, informing the visual narrative in these photographs. Some of the images depict sites where the original structure is no longer present. As a placeholder, I have inserted silhouettes of the original building or what I imagine of the appearance of the original building. The architecture and geography of America’s educational Apartheid, in the form of a system of “colored schools,” within the landscape of southern New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois is the central concern of this project.

 

Wendel A. White was born in Newark, New Jersey and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. He was awarded a BFA in photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York and an MFA in photography from the University of Texas at Austin. White is currently Distinguished Professor of Art at Stockton University in New Jersey. He has received various awards and fellowships including a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in photography, three artist fellowships from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts, a photography grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and a photography fellowship from En Foco Inc.

His work is represented in museums libraries, corporate, and private collections.  White’s work is included in numerous publications including two books about his work, Manifest (published in 2014 by Chroma) and Small Towns, Black Lives (published in 2003 by the Noyes Museum of Art). White has served on the board of directors for the Society for Photographic Education, the Atlantic City Historical Museum, New Jersey Black Culture and Heritage Foundation, and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.