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Gelatin silver photograph. Image measures approximatley 18¼" x 7¼" on 10" x 21¼" paper. Emulsion with creasing and cracking from being rolled, several short tears the longest affecting about 1½" of the image at the ceiling, internal tape reinforcements on the verso, sound and about very good. Signed "Scurlock Photo." in the negative. A portrait of about 50 African-American members of The Sentinel Club, in two views. The 1946 Lincoln University Alumni Directory lists a Frederick Douglass Hilliard, Washington, D.C. Policeman, as a member of The Sentinel Club, but additional information about the Sentinel Club has proved elusive. Addison N. Scurlock (1883-1964) was born in Fayetteville, North Carolina. His family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1900, where Scurlock apprenticed with a white photographer, Moses Rice. In 1904, at the age of 21, he opened his own studio, working out of his parents home, focusing on the African-American community. He became the official photographer of Howard University, and in 1911 he opened Scurlock Studios - Fine Photography, on U Street. He was "one of the leading photographers of his day… ever present at school and church ceremonies to capture on film Washington's and the nation's premiere black community in its life and work" (Sullivan, *Black Artists in Photography, 1840-1940*, p.85). He photographed Booker T. Washington, Marian Anderson, Father Divine, and W.E.B. Du Bois, among many others. He also served an important role as a "functioning news service, supplying African-American newspapers with photographs of major events" (ibid, p.93; c.f. Coar, *A Century of Black Photographers: 1840-1960*, pp.65-72, 184). The Scurlock Studio Archive was purchased by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. Seller Inventory # 519210
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