About

1/2 inch; photographic.
4 gelatin silver prints

Collection Description

Morris Crawford, Sr., an Austin, Texas community photographer, was born November 30, 1920, in Texarkana, Texas. He grew up there and attended Prairie View College (Prairie View A& M University). During the Second World War, Crawford served in the Coast Guard. After the war he married Lucille Dotson about 1946 and they moved to Austin.

Crawford, a self-taught photographer, began shooting at L. C. Anderson High School in Austin where his wife was director of women's physical education. Photographic work multiplied, and during the 1950s and 1960s while teaching vocational agriculture at Anderson High, he met fellow teacher and photographer Robert Whitby. When Whitby died in 1979, Crawford accepted many of his clients and became one of the principal photographers in the African American community in Austin.

When Anderson High School closed in 1971, Crawford went to Burnet Junior High School where he was vice-principal until his death December 30, 1983. An oral history with Crawford's son and examples of his work appear in Portraits of Community: African American Photography in Texas (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1996).

The collection consists of modern prints and vintage prints made by Morris Crawford between 1957 and 1983. Photographs document portraiture, education, entertainment, and religious life in the African American community of Austin, Texas.

Arrangement: arranged by series and chronologically.

Copyright and permissions: Copyright retained by photographer's family. Prints for research and study only. Written permission to reproduce required from photographer's family.

Source: Morris Crawford, Jr.

See also: Oral History Collection