1937 to 1947 in brooklyn, new york. she did it from the time she was age eight to the time she was age 20. each week, on a sunday, she would have a group of her friends get together after church and they would take photos. photos at coney island, photos in the park, photos and picnics. photos in the neighborhood. just really a good opportunity to catpture the whole collection that was handed down to me because i followed with my mother's love of photography. it was handed down to me. i have a total of 300 photos with captions of the year they were taken and the people in the photos. you can check with my grandmother about it. she passed away at 103. i would always go through the book with her and she would share the history with me. of who they were and how they came to the neighborhood. a lot of them were from north carolina, south carolina virginia.

our family was from alabama. i always felt that i had something special. back then very few african-americans in 1937 had cameras. my grandmother said my mother did not have a father, but she had a camera. she took pictures all the time. i always knew this was something special she had put together that she left the family and left the world. >> mr. evans has brought in what. amounts to a visual social history of black life in brooklyn, new york, pre-and post post-world war ii. and the variety of scenes that his mother took. so, kids on street corners just at play or posing in a playground or trips to the beach. >> going to coney island. >> going to coney island. young couples that are literally

-- clearly according. there are a range of activities and scenes. the background constitutes this as a social history of brooklyn and the black experience in a time of immense change at around world war ii, a time of gender changes as well as economic and social changes. we are looking at a window of black life that we do not have a good picture of. here we have 300 pictures of the same group of individuals as they grow up. and the ability, his mother was prescient enough to write down the names of the individuals in her scrapbook. so we can associate the names with these images. we have other collections of images, of snapshots like this but in some cases we do not know where, let alone who is pictured.

this has the documentation that will allow us and others to build out from this collection. >> we have it broken down into three different types of objects. we are looking at paper and photographs, textiles, and then general objects. we've seen a lot of quilts. i heard the textile people say it has been a quilt city. there are family photos, old family photos. lots of paper. we have a certificate and a graduation diploma from the 1800's. so, lots of interesting things. >> he collected a souvenir, a baseball signed by satchel paige and josh gibson. it is hard to read that. souvenirs come out of all

ballgames. the negro leagues were famous for players signing autographs with fans, just as they do today. the balls would go up into the stands and people would get them signed. the key is her satchel paige and josh gibson r. you know who they are. satchel paige is probably the most famous picture in the negro leagues who did join the american league. he pitched in the major leagues for a few games. he is the premier pitcher in the negro leagues. josh gibson is exactly the opposite. he is the premier hitter. he is the babe ruth and hank aaron of the negro leagues. so, you have got a baseball signed by these two premier players of the negro leagues. and it is a great personal souvenir. something that you keep.

and you are interested in keeping and having as a memento of your stepfather as well as the negro leagues. >> my friend's mother passed away about 15 years ago, and we went to the basement and we found these dolls. and they had been in the basement for a long time, ok? and he decided to give them to me. i kept them. i love them. my mother was a seamstress. and i am a seamstress as well. i was impressed with the way these dolls looked, and the clothing she made for them. dressed them up. earrings on some of them. and they are just adorable. >> we have the three specialties of paper -- photographs, textiles, and generic objects, but the textile people have

objects that are bigger. they have a special station. it will be an evening gown or a quilt. then they show the owner how to preserve it with archival tissue paper and typically roll it back up so they can bring it home and a tie it with an archival cotton ribbon, so they go home with her their objects so that it will last for another 100 years. >> i'm an independent curator from chicago. i've been doing these -- i think this is my seventh time coming into what ever the program is. and reviewing objects. whenever the museum does a program like this, they are looking for expert staff to review them all. i'm one one of the people they call for textile review. it is really varied from city to city what people have brought in. probably one of the things we see with more frequency are quilts. and that might not sound exciting, but we think it is

exciting because they come in and people have a lot of connection with them for generations. they often will be worn out. when they get saved, we are excited about it. yesterday, we saw a whole array of different quilts in different parts of the country. when we are looking at them, we are looking at what the materials are that go into it because that helps us know when it was made. we look for differences in the pattern or technique. one of the things i'm always looking at is the edges. because you can put on a separate binding, but you can also pick the front of the quilts and move it to the back. there are regional variations. in quilting, sometimes something is made by completely by one person. but oftentimes women are , finishing the quilt as a group. so, you see the different stitches going into it. you get a sense of the community

that it came from, beyond just the individual. so, yesterday, i think we saw what they call a signature quilt. this would have been made as a gift for someone. we totaled up 240 different sets of initials and names on it. it could have also been done as a fundraiser for a church. that sort of thing. we saw some crazy quilts. patterns are pretty crazy. we saw some quilts with an official african-american technique. and in one of the strip quilts, we saw there were dress fabrics. it gave us a great indication of what all resources were available. yesterday, we saw a baseball uniform from a negro baseball player from the negro league. that was an exciting piece.

later on in the day, the family came back. we saw the traditional textile made by the people & year. the less people of zaire -- we saw the traditional textiles made by the people of zaire. we have seen all kinds of things. a lot of dolls came in. not everything is old or worn out. everything is precious. quite the array. our concern with textiles is that they do not get -- so, a light damaged. a lot of times people say that their priority is being able to pass it on. we encourage them to put it away and take it out for special occasions. we do show people how to use acid free tissue paper and boxes, and how to support it so it will not get creases or deteriorate. we are protecting it from dust and light and little hands or

pets. this is what we call preventive conservation. >> we started in 2008 in chicago, and this is our 16th city. we have been out west. we have been to the south several times, and we have sort of hit many different cities across the country. one of our main missions is to help people preserve what we call cultural patrimony the , things they have in their basements that they might not think are important but tell a story of our history. >> this is a photograph. of my mother. she was probably 16 at the time. she is of mixed heritage. so her father was white. her mother was african-american. and she could pass as a white girl in south carolina. this must've been in the 1940's.

this is from my grandfather's house. i think they are probably from at least the 1930's or 1940's. i'm here today to get a sense of how to preserve them. so i can leave this to my kids and my grandkids. what's i tell the story frequently of an apron that was beautiful, blue and white gingham check. it had an unusual embroidery at the bottom and i promised myself i would go home and do that someday. i never have yet, but it was a beautiful, simple garment heard . the family lore was that it was from the 1930's. when the reviewers looked at the stitching, they realized it was an object that was made near slavery time. that was an amazing thing. >> so, let me ask you this.

whose manuscripts and papers? >> i am not exactly sure. i am having a hard time finding this person. it does say who the owner was. >> have you researched the owner? >> i have tried. i don't know if i will need a last name. i am not sure. >> sarah, it looks like freeman. f-r-e-e-m-a-n late of kent county, the 13th day of november, 1807. then let's see. and duly proved and recorded -- it appears a certain negro man named david is freed from slavery. you need to look into sarah pierce freeman. it looks like she is giving --

she gave freedom to david. >> right. >> david is the identified negro. david is 5'7" high, dark complexion, about 30 years old. raised in kent county. that tells you a lot of information. if it's 1806, then he would have been born around 1780. >> thank you for being a good steward and saving it. this is powerful. >> it is. it means a lot to me and i have three children and they know about all of this. that is one of the reasons i brought it. >> i like you even say save it for them, because it sounds like they are interested in having it saved. that is a very good thing.

>> i would like to say that almost everybody leaves with a smile on their face. people are pleased not only to know more about their objects but that somebody thought it was an important thing. to them, it was the thing that was on the shelf or in the closet. down in the basement. they thought to bring it out today. this is important. it might not have monetary value and it might not be something in a museum ever, but it is something that tells american history and they should take care of it. >> i brought some photos my father had made when he was training in tuskegee for the tuskegee airmen. he had these mounted there. i wanted to find out the best way to take care of them and if there might be some interest in this. >> i have this -- [indiscernible] you see them used in barbershops a long time ago to massage a scalp. it has the attachments that goes

with it. this is something you will never, ever find again in life. as i was telling her, if they still used this, we probably would not have any bald men out here. [laughter] >> when we were in kansas, someone called to notify us that they were going to bring a firearm. that was unusual. we had to work with the venue to make sure that was ok. another person called in advance to tell us about a nazi flag their father had brought back from world war ii. the things you would not think would appear. it is different for every city. when we were down south, we saw a lot of iron work. beautiful wrought iron. and then we also saw a lot of sweet grass baskets. the program takes on the flavor of the city we are in. >> [indiscernible conversations]

>> we have two wonderful woman women with us from canada. and they, dee showed me on the second treasures -- she was the reviewer. she showed me a picture on her cell phone of a room full of boxes. she said i made these in one day. i said, would you come back with us next time and make archival boxes to order? if a curator deemed your object in danger of being deteriorated, they will order a custom box or a backboard to support it. you again put it away in an archival sleeve or something that will take care of it. we have had a good time teaching the public about how to preserve their things. keep an eye out for our website because in the future, we will

have some of this information online as well. >> my emily helped my mother left a special gift for the family and the world -- my family felt that my mother left a special gift for the family and the world. to have that acknowledged is great. >> you can watch this and other american artifacts programs anytime by visiting www.c-span.org/history. >> with live coverage of the house on c-span and the senate on c-span2 on cspan3 we confident that coverage by showing you the most relevant hearings and public affairs events. the 150th anniversary of the civil war, visiting battlefields and key events. american artifacts, touring museums and historic sites to reveal what artifacts show about our past.

the presidency, looking at the policies and legacies of our commanders in chiefs. lectures in history and our new series, "reel america" featuring archival films from the 1930's through the 1970's. watch us in h.d., like us on facebook, and follow us on twitter. >> each week, american history tv's "reel america" brings you archival films that helped to the story of the 20th century. next, "sniper employment," a 1992 u.s. army training film that briefly outlines the history of snipers in the american military and shows how snipers should be deployed and used in a variety of combat situations. some techniques may have been used by the late navy seal sniper, chris kyle, whose book memoir four tours in iraq war is the basis of the academy award nominated book "american

sniper." >> the american sniper's dates from the time of the revolutionary war. since then, snipers have been employed in every war and conflict. during our civil war, general burton helped perfect the techniques the snipers use. world war i saw german soldiers use high-powered rifles with telescopic sights. during world war ii, the united states armed marksman with special rifles to conduct sniper operations. world war ii taught us that a sniper is a weapon of opportunity and a typical rifleman cannot be assigned the sniper mission. every marksman is not a sniper. every sniper is a marksman. during the korean conflict, army and marine corps commanders failed to appreciate the techniques and capabilities of snipers. as a result, a sniper school was founded by the united states army infantry school in 1955-1956 to pass on these