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(PHOTOGRAPHY.) BATTEY, CORNELIUS M.
Even Tide. “When Dusky
Twilight Begins to Gather ‘Round Me.
8 x 10 inches matte finish silver print photo-
graph by Tuskegee’s resident photographer Cornelius M. Battey with his Tuskegee
Photograph Division blind stamp in the lower right corner; typewritten caption sheet
affixed to the verso: “Permission is given Hampton Tuskegee Fund for us in their cam-
paign.”
Tuskegee, AL, [1916-1920]
[800/1,200]
A TOUCHING PHOTO OF AN ELDERLY WOMAN
,
VERY POSSIBLY AN EX
-
SLAVE
,
SEATED SMOK
-
ING HER CORN
-
COB PIPE
.
Cornelius Marion Battey (1873-1927) was born in Augusta Georgia,
but spent the majority of his life in the North. In 1916, Battey was tapped to head the new
Photography department at Tuskegee. He had excellent credentials and in the last decade of the 19th
century and into the early years of the twentieth produced a series of portraits titled “Our Heroes of
Destiny” that included W.E.B. Du Bois, John Mercer Langston, Frederick Douglass, Paul Lawrence
Dunbar and Booker T Washington. Many of his portraits appeared in the pages of Opportunity and
Crisis Magazine.