[Oklahoma Photographica]: [African Americana]:

$1,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

EMPLOYEES ITEN BISCUIT COMPANY SNOW WHITE BAKERY OKLAHOMA [cover title]. A striking panoramic photograph of the employees of an early Oklahoma bakery, likely produced as a keepsake for the staff or management. The photograph shows some 200 employees of the Iten Biscuit Company of Oklahoma, a subsidiary of the main Iten company of Iowa.The arrangement of the employees in the photograph—the juxtaposition of race, gender, and class—is startling. At left, four horse-drawn carriages are controlled by African-American men in white uniforms and hats, with white men in overalls sitting in the carriages, holding the reins of the horses. The middle section is dominated by about 150 white women (and a handful of white men) in simple white dresses and bonnets. The right side of the image shows the executives of the company in dark suits and ties, and perhaps their wives and children, ranged around two Model-T Ford automobiles. The organization of the image divides the subjects into thirds, segregated by race, gender, and class.The photograph was likely taken about 1913. The Iten Biscuit Company's new Oklahoma City plant and distribution hub, in front of which the present panorama was taken, was completed in October 1912. Constructed at a cost of $250,000, the Iten Biscuit Company building in Oklahoma City consisted of five stories totaling about 126,000 square feet of space; it was also constructed with restrooms and a breakroom on each floor, quite unusual for a commercial building in 1

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