Popular culture materials and commercial images are a valuable tool for exploring the cultural constructs which framed the lives and experiences of African-American women. Popular images of African-American women can be found in a variety of forms such as advertisements, postcards, calendars, letterhead, popular art work, sheet music, post cards, greeting cards, and other ephemeral items. These types of materials may exist in specific collections such as those listed below, but ephemeral and popular materials are often standard component in most collections. Nineteenth and early 20th century sheet music, postcards, and advertisments document the narrow stereotyping of African-American women as mammies, earth mothers, and seducers. More contemporary advertisments show African-American women as smart, successful, and still, very sexy.
Later materials use a more serious tone to lend credibility to racist and sexist messages.
As with documetary photographs, both the creator and the intended audience of the material must be considered when interpreting the significance of a particular image. These images can provide clues about the nature of African-American women's experiences within a culture posessing a predominately white perspective. A heightened sensitivity to some of the mythic constructs can be useful in interpreting other textual sources, such as diaries, letters, and literature, as well. These materials are also valuable research tools in that they inevitably force the researcher to examine her own notions of African-American women's experiences which ultimately affects the nature of historical inquiry. Collection contains trade cards, leaflets, catalogues, and broadsides grouped by products such as agriculture, food, sewing, books, furniture, machinery, and railroads.