Hugh Mangum
Lost in a Durham Barn for Fifty Years, Hugh Mangum’s Photos Form a Vivid Portrait of the Jim Crow South
Hugh Mangum, an itinerant photographer from a prominent Durham, North Carolina, family, traveled a rail circuit through North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Lost in a Durham Barn for Fifty Years, Hugh Mangum’s Photos Form a Vivid Portrait of the Jim Crow South
Hugh Mangum, an itinerant photographer from a prominent Durham, North Carolina, family, traveled a rail circuit through North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia. Along this route he took portraits of a remarkable variety of people, rendering a rich and diverse pictorial history of the region at the turn of the 20th century. At the beginning of his photographic career in the early 1890s, Mangum maintained a darkroom in a tobacco pack house on the Mangum farm at West Point on the Eno River in Durham. Over the years, he moved to Virginia and partnered with colleagues to operate photography studios in Roanoke, Pulaski, and East Radford, Virginia.
The Friends of West Point and other organizations, individuals, and Mangum family members worked together to restore Hugh Mangum’s darkroom and to open the "Hugh Mangum Museum of Photography" at West Point Park on the Eno River in 1986. That same year, the Association for the Preservation of the Eno River Valley gave Hugh Mangum’s glass plate negatives to the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University.
The Hugh Mangum Photographs Collection consists of approximately 688 negatives made from the early 1890s through 1922.
Please note that the information in the "Descriptive Title" field has been supplied by Library staff. There is no known record of titles assigned to these images by the photographer.
Source: https://indyweek.com/.../time-works-its-magic-on-hugh.../
To View The Hugh Mangum Collection,
Source: https://repository.duke.edu/dc/hmp
The Hawley Museum is passionately committed to uncovering and sharing the fascinating family stories that have influenced our state's and nation's history. We believe that every family has a unique story to tell, one that adds depth to the rich tapestry of North Carolina and U.S. History.
We encourage you to reflect on your own family narrative—did your ancestors play a pivotal role in these historical events? We invite you to become a part of our family curator team by sharing your family's history, whether it be through photos, videos, articles, or documents.
Let’s work together and weave a more comprehensive narrative that honors the roles families have played in our collective past to inspire future museum visitors.
The Hawley Museum is passionately committed to uncovering and sharing the fascinating family stories that have influenced our state's and nation's history. We believe that every family has a unique story to tell, one that adds depth to the rich tapestry of North Carolina and U.S. History.
We encourage you to reflect on your own family narrative—did your ancestors play a pivotal role in these historical events? We invite you to become a part of our family curator team by sharing your family's history, whether it be through photos, videos, articles, or documents.
Let’s work together and weave a more comprehensive narrative that honors the roles families have played in our collective past to inspire future museum visitors.