"Sepia: Past. Pride. Power" features cover shots and photos from Sepia, a photojournalistic magazine styled like Look and occasionally described as the “poor man’s Ebony.” The magazine was founded in 1946 as Negro Achievements by Horace J. Blackwell, an African-American clothing merchant of Fort Worth.

Following the death of Blackwell in 1949, George Levitan, a Jewish-American man who was a plumbing merchant in Fort Worth, bought the magazines and Good Publishing Company (aka Sepia Publishing) in 1950. He changed the name to Sepia, and the magazine continued publishing beyond Levithan’s death until 1983. In 1991, the vast collection of Sepia photos was donated to the African American Museum, Dallas, and is now part of its permanent collection.

The Sepia exhibition includes some of the biggest names from the past century in entertainment, politics and culture, including Aretha Franklin, Huey Newton, Ray Charles, Althea Gibson, Cicely Tyson, James Earl Jones and more.