Images of deportation are part of America’s story

We all want to more about what people were thinking in black and white photos. The older the photo, the more mysterious. People standing in place for longer than we can imagine, waiting for flash of the bulb, often not smiling. Yet, they were saying something as they tried preserve their moments in history.

Each Saturday, I volunteer at a local museum and I rummage through old photos, deciding what is valuable to keep in the museum’s collection and what should be discarded. Often times it is a hard decision. What makes something like a photo of people valuable?

A few days ago, copies of photos depicting the round up and transportation of nearly 1,300 protesting miners in Bisbee, Arizona during the summer of 1917 popped up in our museum’s donation pile. We were familiar with them and already had copies so it was decided easily to discard them.

But as I looked at them closely, I began to feel what people in old black and white photos were trying to say, especially during trying times. They don’t communicate in pictures like we do today. This group of photos told the stories of everyday people, living in a small mining community…