Two photographs documenting the String Band of Manhattan Lodge No. 45 of the Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World, the historically Black fraternal Elks organization, mounted together on an album leaf, are the subject of this lot. No photographer's imprint is visible. A period pencil annotation identifies one musician as Uncle Leroy, and the fabric banner within the image dates the band's organization to New York, 1931.

The African American musicians pose on a rooftop holding banjos, guitars, a mandolin, violin, and saxophone, the men in white shirts and the women in white dresses draped with sashes and capes suggestive of Elks ceremonial regalia. A bass drum lettered Manhattan 45 New York String Band and stamped with an elk head emblem sits beside a trophy cup and cymbals, while the fabric banner reads String Band of Manhattan Lodge No. 45, I.B.P.O.E.W., Org. New York 1931.

The Improved Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World was founded in Cincinnati in 1898 after African Americans were excluded from the white Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and it grew into the country's largest Black fraternal order. Manhattan Lodge No. 45, also known as Monarch Lodge No. 45, was founded in Harlem in 1907 by numbers banker and philanthropist Casper Holstein and became one of five I.B.P.O.E.W. lodges active in the neighborhood. The lodge sustained a long musical tradition, from a 1916 military band to a sixty piece marching band that performed at the order's 1927 national convention parade in Harlem, and the trophy shown here points to the band competitions common among the city's Black Elks lodges.

The mounted sheets measure approximately 14 by 10 1/2 inches. The reverse carries a pencil and ink portrait sketch of a man inscribed Sgt. Young and dated 1950, unrelated to the string band photographs and consistent with later reuse of the album leaf.