Robert H.

McNeill Make a Wish from the series

The Bronx Slave Market 1937
B 1917 Washington, D.C., USA
D 2005 Washington, D.C., USA Gelatin silver print
6 3/4 × 8 11/16 in. (17.1 × 22 cm)
Acquired through the generosity of
The Friends of Education of The Museum
of Modern Art and the Committee
on Photography Fund. 2014

Born into a secure middle-class household in a segregated Washington, D.C., Robert H. McNeill Untitled from the series
absorbed the political and cultural life of the city and studied at Howard University. He well knew the The Bronx Slave Market 1937
vibrant images published in the black press of the 1920s and ’30s, and in 1937, at the age of twenty, Gelatin silver print
he moved to New York to study photography. There he began to document the experiences of 7 5/8 × 9 1/2 in. (19.4 × 24.1 cm)
Acquired through the generosity of
underemployed black women and men, and his photographs were published in black newspapers.
The Friends of Education of The Museum
Among McNeill’s many projects of this period was a series called The Bronx Slave Market, of Modern Art and the Committee
a title referring to the auction block of the slave-trade era but named after a modern street corner on Photography Fund. 2014

where black women waited to be selected for day and live-in domestic positions in the Bronx
and Westchester County. McNeill began to follow these workers and their potential employers
in November 1937, photographing them early in the morning and sometimes late in the afternoon.
His visual record of their long waits for work and their negotiations with white employers shapes
a narrative of the time. As the activist journalist Marvel Cooke wrote in 1950,

The way the Slave Market operates is primitive and direct and simple—as simple as selling a pig or a cow
in a public market. The housewife goes to the spot where she knows women in search of domestic work
congregate and looks over the prospects. She almost undresses them with her eyes as she measures their
strength, to judge how much work they can stand. If one of them pleases her, the housewife asks what
her price is by the hour. Then she beats that price down as low as the worker will permit.

McNeill likewise commented,

It was the small things that struck me. . . . How cold it was on that particular corner in the Bronx. The
idea that this woman had come up from the South, maybe was staying with relatives in New York and
needed to help pay the rent, and ended up doing what she had known in the South. Or the expressions
on the white woman’s face, after she offers to pay 15 cents [an hour] and [the black woman] says,
“Uh-uh, 20 cents is my price.”

McNeill looked closely at the women on both sides of the economic divide, but he was especially
adept at conveying the beauty and humanity of the black women. Although they dressed for both the
cold weather and the menial work, note the stylish twist of a hat and the turn of a high collar. The style of
black femininity was not lost on McNeill. His photographs are complex portraits, affording an aesthetic
as well as a sociohistorical reference to a shared experience of black women during the Depression.
The ingenious detailing of McNeill’s photographs tells us much. In one, a woman sits reading
a paper on a crate advertising “Fancy Idaho Baking Potatoes,” while another stands in hat and
sunglasses, gloved hands folded beneath a purse held tightly under her arm. Nearby, a young man
holding a bucket leans against the wall, ready for a day of labor. By including a fraction of the poster
for the 1937 film Make a Wish, McNeill attaches the black women to the hopes of the widowed white
woman in the movie.
McNeill’s photographs were published in Flash! and Fortune and his project later attracted
the attention of Fiorello La Guardia. As New York’s mayor, La Guardia would go on to establish the
Committee on Street Corner Markets, which outlawed the hiring of women off the street and opened
employment offices to combat exploitative practices.

Deborah Willis

308 309
Robert H. McNeill Make a Wish from the series
The Bronx Slave Market 1937
B 1917 Washington, D.C., USA
D 2005 Washington, D.C., USA Gelatin silver print
6 3/4 × 8 11/16 in. (17.1 × 22 cm)
Acquired through the generosity of
The Friends of Education of The Museum
of Modern Art and the Committee
on Photography Fund. 2014

Born into a secure middle-class household in a segregated Washington, D.C., Robert H. McNeill Untitled from the series
absorbed the political and cultural life of the city and studied at Howard University. He well knew the The Bronx Slave Market 1937
vibrant images published in the black press of the 1920s and ’30s, and in 1937, at the age of twenty, Gelatin silver print
he moved to New York to study photography. There he began to document the experiences of 7 5/8 × 9 1/2 in. (19.4 × 24.1 cm)
Acquired through the generosity of
underemployed black women and men, and his photographs were published in black newspapers.
The Friends of Education of The Museum
Among McNeill’s many projects of this period was a series called The Bronx Slave Market, of Modern Art and the Committee
a title referring to the auction block of the slave-trade era but named after a modern street corner on Photography Fund. 2014

where black women waited to be selected for day and live-in domestic positions in the Bronx
and Westchester County. McNeill began to follow these workers and their potential employers
in November 1937, photographing them early in the morning and sometimes late in the afternoon.
His visual record of their long waits for work and their negotiations with white employers shapes
a narrative of the time. As the activist journalist Marvel Cooke wrote in 1950,

The way the Slave Market operates is primitive and direct and simple—as simple as selling a pig or a cow
in a public market. The housewife goes to the spot where she knows women in search of domestic work
congregate and looks over the prospects. She almost undresses them with her eyes as she measures their
strength, to judge how much work they can stand. If one of them pleases her, the housewife asks what
her price is by the hour. Then she beats that price down as low as the worker will permit.

McNeill likewise commented,

It was the small things that struck me. . . . How cold it was on that particular corner in the Bronx. The
idea that this woman had come up from the South, maybe was staying with relatives in New York and
needed to help pay the rent, and ended up doing what she had known in the South. Or the expressions
on the white woman’s face, after she offers to pay 15 cents [an hour] and [the black woman] says,
“Uh-uh, 20 cents is my price.”

McNeill looked closely at the women on both sides of the economic divide, but he was especially
adept at conveying the beauty and humanity of the black women. Although they dressed for both the
cold weather and the menial work, note the stylish twist of a hat and the turn of a high collar. The style of
black femininity was not lost on McNeill. His photographs are complex portraits, affording an aesthetic
as well as a sociohistorical reference to a shared experience of black women during the Depression.
The ingenious detailing of McNeill’s photographs tells us much. In one, a woman sits reading
a paper on a crate advertising “Fancy Idaho Baking Potatoes,” while another stands in hat and
sunglasses, gloved hands folded beneath a purse held tightly under her arm. Nearby, a young man
holding a bucket leans against the wall, ready for a day of labor. By including a fraction of the poster
for the 1937 film Make a Wish, McNeill attaches the black women to the hopes of the widowed white
woman in the movie.
McNeill’s photographs were published in Flash! and Fortune and his project later attracted
the attention of Fiorello La Guardia. As New York’s mayor, La Guardia would go on to establish the
Committee on Street Corner Markets, which outlawed the hiring of women off the street and opened
employment offices to combat exploitative practices.

Deborah Willis

308 309