This photo comes from my favorite vintage children's book find of all time: Tobe, published in 1939 with photographs by Charles Anderson Farrell and text by Stella Gentry Sharpe. Through vignettes and photographs it tells the story of a black farming family in Goshen (just south of Greensboro) North Carolina during the depression. It's sort of an unknown children's book version of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (one of my favorite books). I am sure one of these days I will share more of Tobe in a separate post. But for now, (and in honor of the amazing Halloween in the Time of Cholera set that has spread so rapidly around the web): this creepy urchin Halloween photo.
[We just got back from a morning photo shoot on Belle Isle, so I'll have pictures of the kids in their costumes posted shortly]