Races, Negroes: United States. Alabama. Tuskegee. Tuskegee Institute: Agencies Promoting Assimilation of the Negro. Training for Commercial and Industrial Employment. Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama: Hospital and Nurse Training School. 1902

Curator: This photograph by Frances Benjamin Johnston captures the Hospital and Nurse Training School at the Tuskegee Institute. The image, whose date is unknown, shows a formal gathering of students and faculty on the steps of a building. Editor: There's a quiet dignity to this composition. The stark monochrome and orderly arrangement almost sanitize the complex historical context. Curator: Johnston's work often documented educational institutions. Considering the caption, "Agencies Promoting Assimilation of the Negro," one can examine the construction of identity and labor through the lens of early 20th-century educational practices. Editor: Absolutely, the photograph's materiality—the paper, the printing process—speaks to a specific moment of industrialization and social engineering, a time when institutions actively shaped Black Americans' roles in society. Curator: It's a stark reminder of how images can be both documents and instruments of power. Editor: Indeed, and it challenges us to critically examine the visual legacies of such institutions.