Marion Butts Collection

Lee Marion Butts, Sr. (1924 – 2002), an African-American commercial photographer and editor of the Dallas Express newspaper, recorded events and community life in Dallas as part of a career that spanned the last half of the twentieth century.

His rich body of work documents not only segregation and civil rights, but also business, civic, religious, educational, and social life, as well as visits by national leaders and celebrity entertainers.

The Marion Butts Photograph Collection, a group of over 58,000 negatives, was purchased by the Dallas History & Archives Division of the Dallas Public Library from the Butts family in 2005.

A previous grant, funded by The Summerlee Foundation, allowed the Library to house the negatives in archival, acid-free sleeves and create an in-house database that provides access to the collection.

In 2010, the Dallas Public Library was awarded a TexTreasures grant through the Texas State Library and Archives Commission to make photographs and other primary source materials accessible online that were only previously available in negative or paper form. The core of the project's focus was the digitization of a group of photographic negatives selected by Mr. Butts as his most significant work. In addition, a series of online Texas-focused, TEKS-based lesson plans targeting 7th grade students was developed to utilize Marion Butts’ unique photographs chronicling Dallas and Texas history during the segregation and the civil rights eras. 

Researchers seeking to locate additional photographs can contact the Dallas History & Archives Division of the Dallas Public Library at texas@dallaslibrary.org for further assistance.