Her photos captured life in Black Los Angeles during the 1940s and ’50s. Vera Jackson, the only woman who worked in the 1940s as a staff photographer for The California Eagle — the oldest Black newspaper — captured images of weddings, society events and protests, chronicling every-day life in a community that was largely ignored by the rest of the city.

California State University, Northridge’s Tom & Ethel Bradley Center has acquired a collection of images by photographer Vera Jackson, the only woman who worked in the 1940s as a staff photographer of The California Eagle—the oldest Black newspaper in Los Angeles.