Cultural documentary photographer Roland Freeman (1936–2023) and folklorist Worth W. Long (1936–2025) are renowned for their groundbreaking research on African American expressive culture over four decades, both as individuals and as a team.

Roland’s sensitive portraits of Arabbers plying their trade in Baltimore, African American community traditions in Philadelphia, quilters in Mississippi and Virginia, civil rights workers in the South, and African immigrants in metropolitan Washington, D.C., endure as some of the most compelling records of African American life in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Worth’s lifelong dedication to community-centered research and support of musicians, artists, and activists throughout the American South, combined with his documentation of traditions of community organizing, offer vital keys to our understanding of movements for social justice rooted in African American history and culture.

Roland was born in Baltimore and spent much of his teenage years in rural Charles County, Maryland. His decision to become a documentary photographer was ignited by the movements for social change around him, such as the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This passion included his 1968 coverage of the Mule Train, one of the caravans of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s Poor People’s Campaign, which later resulted in a book and exhibition.

Roland’s relationship with the Smithsonian began in the early days of the Festival of American Folklife (now the Smithsonian Folklife Festival). He was responsible for bringing the Arabbers to the 1972 Festival and, in 1974, met Worth Long after Ralph Rinzler sent him to document Mississippi participants, some identified by Worth. Roland collaborated with Charles Camp, Gerald Davis, Glenn Hinson, Phyllis May-Machunda, Jerrilyn McGregory, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Peter Seitel, and other folklore scholars and in 1993 created the Group for Cultural Documentation to “increase awareness, understanding, and appreciation among individuals, communities, and institutions of the nature, continuity, vitality, and significance of our various cultural traditions.” Roland did this by continuing his photographic work with colleagues inside and outside the Smithsonian and by collecting, curating, and publishing an impressive number of books and exhibitions, including several on African American quilting traditions. Roland received the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2007.

From his birth in Durham, North Carolina, Worth’s life and work were centered in Southern culture. He studied at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas, and worked as a medic at the Little Rock Airforce Base and Duke University. A civil rights activist as early as 1956, he participated in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and simultaneously became involved in documenting and presenting the folk music of the movement at the Festival of American Folklife and other folklife and heritage festivals.

Roland and Worth met at the Smithsonian’s Office of Folklife Programs (now the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage) and forged a formidable partnership. Their visual and aural records are essential for understanding African American cultural life. Their pioneering work in the early 1970s as codirectors of the Mississippi Folklife Project for the Smithsonian resulted in the book Southern Roads/City Pavements: Photographs of Black Americans (1981). This project also led to the global recognition of African American improvisational quilting traditions—through publications and exhibitions such as Roland’s Something to Keep You Warm (1979) and A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories (1996). These exhibitions, in turn, inspired the Gee’s Bend quilt exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art and elsewhere.

Roland’s work in visual documentation and Worth’s work in oral history are forms of activism. Worth brought to his autoethnographic work the experiences of growing up in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, participating in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and other community-based organizing efforts. Worth’s passion for studying and presenting community organizing as occupational folklore was matched by his fervor for documenting the versatile repertoires of blues and gospel musicians.

Roland and Worth shared mutual love and respect—and Roland even produced a small book recognizing Worth. There is special significance to honoring the partnership that led to such brilliant collaborative work.