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“Uncle Ernest never cataloged most of it properly,” his niece explained during their phone conversation. “He just collected whatever he could find. He always said too much Black history was being destroyed or thrown away, so he saved everything he could get his hands on.”
Rebecca asked whether any documents, correspondence, or records might identify the families in the photographs. The niece promised to search through the remaining boxes before the estate auction.
3 weeks later, a package arrived at Duke. Inside were a handwritten receipt, a studio appointment book, and a fragile envelope of customer correspondence. The receipt, dated October 12, 1897, listed: Washington family, 6 persons, formal sitting, 4 prints ordered, $8.50 paid in full. Washington was only a surname, with no first names.
The appointment book revealed more. On October 12, 1897, at 2 PM, it recorded: Washington, proprietor, Auburn Avenue tailoring establishment, family portrait commission.
Rebecca’s pulse quickened. Auburn Avenue, in Atlanta in 1897, was the center of Black economic success, the street where Black-owned businesses thrived despite the increasing brutality of Jim Crow laws. If the Washingtons owned a tailoring business there, city records might identify them.
She spent the next week immersed in Atlanta archives: business directories, tax records, property deeds, and commercial licenses. Finally, she found it. Thomas Washington, proprietor, Washington and Sons Fine Tailoring, 127 Auburn Avenue, established 1889.
Cross-referencing with census records, she assembled the family structure. Thomas Washington, born 1855. Wife Ruth, born 1858. 4 children listed in the 1900 federal census: David, age 16; Samuel, age 13; Grace, age 11; and Clara, age 9. Clara, born approximately 1891, would have been about 6 or 7 in a photograph taken in 1897.
The position matched. The youngest child was likely Clara Washington. But that did not answer the central question. Why did Clara Washington, daughter of 2 Black parents and sister to 3 Black siblings, appear white in the photograph?
Rebecca began building Clara Washington’s life story from fragmentary records, searching for any clue that might explain the mystery.
Atlanta city directories showed the family’s stability and success. Thomas Washington’s tailoring business appeared in every directory from 1889 through 1904, with advertisements describing fine custom garments for distinguished gentlemen and, later, ladies’ and children’s specialty tailoring. Church records from Big Bethel AME Church, 1 of Atlanta’s oldest and most prominent Black congregations, listed the entire Washington family as members.
Clara’s baptism record, dated April 1892, confirmed her birth: Clara Marie Washington, daughter of Thomas and Ruth Washington, born February 14, 1891. The 1900 census showed the family living in a purchased home on Bell Street just off Auburn Avenue, a substantial 2-story residence valued at $2,800, an impressive sum for a Black family in that era.
But nowhere in these routine records was there any explanation for Clara’s appearance.
Rebecca expanded her search into medical and institutional records, looking for any mention of unusual children, genetic conditions, or families confronting medical anomalies. What she found was disturbing.
In the Georgia State Archives, she discovered reports from the state sanitarium and from various county poorhouses from the 1890s. Several entries referenced “abnormal negro children” who had been surrendered by families or removed by authorities, children with physical differences, disabilities, or appearances that deviated from expectations. One entry from 1896 made Rebecca’s stomach turn: female child, approximately 4 years, negro parents, unusual pigmentation, surrendered to institution by family, county unknown.
The language was clinical and cruel. These children were treated as curiosities, defects, or shameful secrets to be hidden away.
Yet Clara Washington had not been hidden. Rebecca found her name in the 1899 Sunday school enrollment at Big Bethel: Clara Washington, age 8, intermediate class. She was attending church openly and participating in children’s programs. In 1902, Gate City Colored School records listed Clara as a student, though with an unusual notation: modified attendance schedule, supplementary home instruction approved by administration.
The school had made accommodations for her, but she was enrolled. She was being educated. She was part of the community.
Whatever Clara’s condition was, her family was not hiding her. They were raising her openly in a society that typically punished difference with violence or institutionalization. But Rebecca still did not know what that condition was. The photograph showed the visual evidence, but without medical expertise she could not interpret what she was seeing.
She contacted Dr. James Mitchell, a geneticist at Emory University whose research focused on hereditary conditions and their historical documentation. She sent him the digitally enhanced photograph without explanation, asking only, “What do you see when you look at this child?”
His response came within 2 hours. “Where did you find this? I need to know everything about this image.”
They met the following afternoon in his office. Dr. Mitchell had already printed the photograph in high resolution and pinned it beside modern clinical images on his bulletin board.
“This isn’t a white child,” he said at once, pointing to Clara’s figure in the photograph. “This is a Black child with complete oculocutaneous albinism.”
Rebecca felt her breath catch. “Albinism?”
“Look at the characteristics,” Dr. Mitchell said, tracing Clara’s features with his finger. “The dramatically reduced pigmentation, not just lighter skin but near-total absence of melanin. The very light hair, probably white, blonde, or platinum. And if we could see her eyes in color, they’d almost certainly be blue or gray, with a visible red reflex from light hitting the retina.”
He pulled up clinical photographs on his computer. Oculocutaneous albinism is a genetic condition affecting melanin production. It occurs in all populations, including people of African descent. In Black individuals, the contrast is especially dramatic, exactly what appeared in the 1897 photograph.
Rebecca stared at the image with new understanding. Clara was not a white child in a Black family. She was their biological daughter with a genetic condition.
“Exactly,” Dr. Mitchell said. “And that makes this photograph historically extraordinary. Do you understand what it meant for a Black family in Georgia in 1897 to have a child with albinism and raise her openly?”
He pulled up research files. People with albinism, especially Black children with albinism in the Jim Crow South, faced horrific discrimination. They were called ghost children, cursed, unnatural. Many communities believed they were supernatural beings or evidence of sin. Families typically hid these children completely, or worse.
“Worse?” Rebecca asked quietly.