Now on view at Irving Arts Center, through June 1, is the exhibition Behold the People: R. C. Hickman’s Photographs of Black Dallas, 1949–1961. The exhibit is organized by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, and presented in partnership with Humanities Texas, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

R. C. Hickman was a Dallas photographer whose thousands of images produced from 1949 to 1961 document aspects of life in an African American community in Texas. His photographs depict a community largely invisible to white Americans—thoroughly a part of mainstream America by virtue of accomplishment and lifestyle but excluded from it because of race.

Mr. Hickman worked as a commercial portrait photographer, a photojournalist for several black newspapers in Dallas, a freelance photographer for national black publications such as Jet, Sepia and Ebony and a photographer for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His images reveal his awareness of a community within which individuals survive, grow and understand themselves.

The exhibition is free to view, on display in Irving Arts Center’s Carpenter Hall Lobby Gallery through June 1. Gallery viewing hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12PM to 5PM.