Name/Title
Photograph of Modjeska Simkins (Loan)Entry/Object ID
L2020.7.1Description
Carded sepia photograph of a woman wearing a simple-style tunic. The woman, facing the viewer's left, has a short cropped haircut. She is wearing a string of beads or pearls around her neck. The card is gray-brown with an interior embossed frame decorated with flowers and leaves. In the lower left side of the photograph, there is a handwritten engraving which reads, "Sincerely Modjeska."
On loan from Walker Local and Family History Center at Richland Library.Photograph Details
Subject Person or Organization
Modjeska Monteith SimkinsSubject Place
City
Columbia, South CarolinaContext
Despite leaving a legacy of thousands of photographs, one of South Carolina's most famous photographers, Richard Samuel Roberts (1880-1936), was relatively unknown until the mid-1970s, when around 4,000 glass-plate negatives from his studio were discovered under his home in the Arsenal Hill neighborhood by his son, who loaned the collection to South Caroliniana Library at the University of South Carolina and allowed for many of the images to be published in book form.
Self-taught, Roberts operated a studio in Fernandina, Florida, for several years, establishing himself in the photography trade while also working as a fireman and at the docks. After moving to Columbia in 1920 with his wife, Wilhelmina Pearl Selena Williams (1883-1977), Roberts worked at the local post office as a custodian and rented a studio on Washington Street in what was known as the "Black Business District." It is there that he captured the portraits of many people, almost exclusively within the African American community, of all socioeconomic statuses. Roberts also photographed the segregated Black areas of Columbia and similar places around the state. Although he advertised his services in "The Palmetto Leader," a Black newspaper in Columbia, and even photographed its editor, the issue announcing his death does not survive. Instead, Roberts obituary in "The State" newspaper recalled his work as a custodian rather than his integral place chronicling the lives of the Black community.
One such sitter for Roberts was human rights activist, Modjeska Monteith Simkins (1899-1992), who posed for Roberts on at least two occasions. This photograph, gifted by Simkins to an unknown individual, was likely taken before her marriage. Simkins was born and raised in Columbia and graduated from Benedict College in 1921. She later taught at Booker T. Washington High School until 1929, when her marriage to Andrew Whitfield Simkins (1881-1965) disallowed her to continue her teaching career. Simkins instead began working in 1931 as the Director of Negro Work for the South Carolina Tuberculosis Association, becoming South Carolina's only full-time African American public health worker. However, her position was eliminated in 1942, possibly due to her involvement with the NAACP, for which Simkins served as secretary of the state conference of branches (SC NAACP) from 1941 until 1957.
Upon election to the SC NAACP leadership in 1941, Simkins became a key strategist, fundraiser, and publicist for the organization’s landmark legal fights. These included equal pay for Black teachers (Duval v. Seigneus), the end of the state’s all-white Democratic Primary (Elmore v. Rice), and the end of “separate but equal” schools (Briggs v. Elliott). Throughout her career, she remained focused on issues she and others deemed basic human rights: quality education, a living wage, universal health care, and freedom from violence. She served as a key advisor to the Southern Negro Youth Congress in the 1940s and later co-founded the Richland County Citizens' Committee, which focused on voter education and direct action protests in the early 1960s.Made/Created
Artist
Richard Samuel RobertsDate made
1921 - 1929Place
City
Columbia, South Carolina