Photograph of Raphu Williams in Tuskegee Institute band uniform

Source catalog description

This description refers to material held by Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Visual details below describe the original material.

A black and white photograph of a young man, Raphu Williams, in uniform for the Tuskegee Institute band. Shown from the waist up, Williams is seated in quarter-turn pose from the camera but turns his slight to his left to gaze directly at the viewer. He wears a military-style jacket, belted at the waist, with an X shaped pin and a Roman numeral II pin on the collar, and epaulets on the shoulder. He holds a trumpet in his left hand standing upright on his lap. The photograph is set in a cardboard matting with an arch window that has a charcoal grey edge with black pinstripes running along the outer rim. The rest of the matting is brown. Along the matting's bottom margin is pre-printed black text that reads “Photographic Division / P.H. Polk. Instructor / Tuskegee Institute / Alabama.” The bottom portion of the matting has broken away from the upper part.

Explore Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture ↗