Biographical Note
Robert H. McNeill (1917-2005) was born and raised in Washington, D.C. He attended Dunbar High School and then graduated from Howard University. His photography career began when his photo of Jesse Owens' campus visit to Howard University was published in a local newspaper in 1936. McNeill then graduated from the New York Institute of Photography in 1938. Afterward, McNeill worked on the Federal Writer's Project titled "The Negro in Virginia" in 1938. After completing the project, McNeill opened and operated a portrait and freelance photo news service from 1937 through the early 1950s in Washington, D.C. McNeill paused his private enterprises to serve in the U.S. Army as a Second Lieutenant during World War II. He later worked for the United Negro College Fund and then began his career as a photographer for the Department of State from 1950-1956 until he retired as Chief of the Department's Photography Branch in 1978. His work has been exhibited at the Rhode Island Institute of Design, the National Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Modern Art among others. Robert McNeill died on May 27, 2005, in Washington, D.C.
Robert McNeill's parents, Mary Alice Wheeler (1883-1959) and William C. McNeill (1978-1964), were married in 1910 and had three children, William C. McNeill Jr. (1911-2004), Katherine McNeill Walker (1916-1989), and Robert H. McNeill (1917-2005). Mary Alice Wheeler was a teacher in Washington, D.C., and a member of the city's Board of Education. William C. McNeill was a physician and later served as head of the Medical College at Howard University. The family's ancestors include Robert Livingston, signer of the Declaration of Independence, painter and art educator Laura Wheeler Waring, and African American abolitionist preachers Amos Noe Freeman (1809-1893) and Robert Foster Wheeler (1850-1921).
William Henry Richards (1855-1941), born in Athens, TN, was a law professor at Howard University and activist intellectual leader as one of the 29 founders of the Niagara Movement that focused on abolishing Jim Crow and influenced the creation of the NAACP. Richards was a close family friend to the McNeills and left his materials to William C. McNeill when he died.
For more extensive biographies, see the Manuscript Division's finding aid for the Robert H. McNeill family papers, 1839-2008, and the finding aid for the William Henry Richards papers, 1856-1946.