To support “‘Say It with Pictures’ Then and Now: Chicago’s African American Photographers from 1890 through the 1930s”, a multi-tiered academic project exploring the under-recognized impact of African American communities in Chicago on the history of commercial photography in the US. This program jumpstarts a collaborative research project charting the role of African American photographers, studios, and black media in Chicago from 1890 through the 1930s in shaping and disseminating a black modern subjectivity nationally and internationally.