This recent eBay acquisition was listed as: “Original 1890s Photo Black Man Posing in Store with Butcher”. It is a cabinet card photograph from a seller outside of Dallas, Texas. There is nothing written on the back.
An aproned man beneath a “Fish and Oysters Daily” sign slices a piece of meat, perhaps a ham or steak. In front of the counter stands a Black man, perhaps a customer, with a bag in his right hand and some sort of cloth in his left. Behind him are shelves of canned goods and a scale.
On the very right of the photo (behind the customer’s left hand) there is what appears to be some sort of signage for coffee. You can just barely make out what looks like “Dallas, Tex”.
It seems a reasonable guess that this photo was taken near Dallas, Texas sometime in the late 1890s. The scene was a unique one in my search for old-timey store photos and I wanted to know its story. Taken only a few decades after the abolition of slavery, the photo documents a small but important piece of history.
Want too see more old-timey store photos?
This photograph shows J. Everett Baughman standing in his store, Peninsular Net & Twine Co., at 306 W. Fortune St. in Tampa, Florida.