But alongside this work—now preserved at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History as “Portraits of a City: The Scurlock Photographic Studio’s Legacy to Washington, D.C.”—are the family’s abundant but lesser-known images of schoolchildren.

These are exquisitely posed demonstrations of the promise of the next generation, a generation—theoretically anyway—less burdened by and beholden to a heavy, harmful past. Children with more freedom, to think and learn and acquire a good education.

The Scurlocks endeavored to portray the subjects of all of their work in the most flattering light, dressed in Sunday finery or their Lindy Hop best. They showcased the best examples in the display window of their U Street studio. To make it into the window became a substantiation of success.

As author and journalist Wil Haygood put it: “The style of their work—refined, dignified and poised—became known as ‘the Scurlock look.’ It said a lot of things, chief among them that classiness is swell and uplift gets rewarded.”

To create and sustain this view took a deep commitment, one handed down from father to sons. In a 2003 interview, Robert Scurlock described his father as “very intense, in all of his endeavors.” And so for more than six decades the Scurlocks documented, collected, and shared an idealized beauty, and in that act declared that this, too, was a part of the story of black America worth knowing and telling.

This mission presented a particular challenge when it came to portraying the schoolchildren of Washington D.C., where the educational inequities that scourged the nation emerged in a particular way. Unlike anywhere else in the country, public school teachers were employees of the federal government, and so they were paid the same regardless of skin color. The District was also home to the nation’s first public high school for non-white students, named for Paul Laurence Dunbar, whose own literary career, as one of the first nationally recognized black poets, was launched during his years attending an all-white high school.

And yet, the ugliness of segregation and the hardships that it wrought persisted—a school desegregation case from Washington D.C. was one of five from around the country that were combined into Brown v. Board of Education.

But in the Scurlock photos of schoolchildren, the “Scurlock look” is in full effect, in scenes carefully posed to evince the high-minded activities underway. A group of girls in their ballerina best. Boys receiving training in Safety Patrol. Tiny children propped on folding chairs paying rapt attention to their music instructor. And a drama class, complete with fainting couch and a large sign on the wall reading: “Enroll your child and inspire youth to seek a life of value.”

Of course, children often have their own ideas, and among the photos of children, also, are glimpses of a restless shaking-loose from the restraint of the Scurlock sensibility. A preschool girl smiles widely and directly into the camera as she prepares to cut her birthday cake. A group of boys dressed as clowns and circus animals express both ferocity and fun. Three thespians posed on the set of a school play bear expressions of grudging tolerance bordering on misery.

Who were these children and what were their lives like at that time? How do these moments sit in their memories? The information on many of the images in the collection is incomplete, and the Smithsonian welcomes any help in filling in the blanks. You can view much of the collection through their web portal, and also email them on specific photos. In this way, the story of the “Scurlock look” continues to unfold.

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Outterbridge was born in 1933 in Greenville, North Carolina, where he saw and felt the effects of segregation and took in from his mother the need to “press on” despite racist oppression. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1963, two years before the Watts Riots. Anne Ellegood, senior curator at the Hammer Museum, explained recently how assemblage was part of that moment. For African-American artists, a practice that made profound meaning from what society had cast off was part of a general demand for recognition of under-served communities and unrecognized histories. Assemblage has a varied history—back to Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, at least, and including Robert Rauschenberg’s combines, Joseph Cornell’s boxes, and Edward Kienholz’s installations. Outterbridge is part of a prominent group of black artists—including Noah Purifoy, Betye Saar, John Riddle and Senga Nengudi—who nurtured their careers in Los Angeles and remained inter-connected as they rose to prominence. They brought a modernist genre into conversation with African-American heritage, which Angelenos were reminded of in “Now Dig This!” a group show of L.A. black artists active in the 1960s and ‘70s presented at the Hammer and part of 2012’s “Pacific Standard Time,” a multi-venue exploration of Los Angeles’ art scene.

Like several in that set, Outterbridge took his creative practice into arts education and organization as well as art-making. Centering these efforts in the South Los Angeles region, he cofounded the Compton Communicative Arts Academy in 1969. He was later director of the Watts Towers Art Center, housed next to Simon Rodia’s iconic Watts Towers—a mosaiced monument meticulously embellished with salvaged shells, tile and glass—and co-founded by Purifoy after the Watts Riots. Outterbridge worked there for 17 years. He lived the belief, as Ellegood put it, that “art has a social role and can actually change society.” Outterbridge’s assemblage is uniquely suited to this kind of change—since it is open to and valuing all. “Wherever I was,” he said, “anything was available and anything could be used and was used.”

It was a lesson that connected the evolving conditions of L.A. with Outterbridge’s earliest experiences. He learned as a boy the beauty of folk art and the aesthetic wisdom of everyday practices. “The rags that hung out to dry blew in the wind like colorful tapestries,” he remembered, “and I was touched by the perfect order that those rags had.” He treasured ad-hoc assemblage in his neighborhood like “the glass bottles in the trees that made music for me and my siblings.” Outterbridge’s father worked as a so-called “junk man” who would collect and resell discarded objects, so “John really grew up with that kind of ethos,” Ellegood said. “Things could always be re-used.”

The current show—called “Rag Man”—emphasizes how Outterbridge’s recent work, especially, looks back to these childhood lessons. A series called “Rag and Bag Idiom” reuses bits of textiles discarded by L.A. manufacturers—in brightly painted, abstract sculptures that seem more organic the more one looks. Other works are drawn from a series using dolls and reflecting on the way different cultural and religious traditions employ such objects. Curated by Ellegood and Jamillah James, the exhibition opened first at Art + Practice in Los Angeles and is on view this month at the Aspen Art Museum. While it’s not a retrospective, it demonstrates the continuities of Outterbridge’s long, steady career.

Assemblage makes that longevity an especial asset. Recollections are so many bits of material, too. “I put memories … away in pockets and places,” Outterbridge said. “I wrap things up and save them for a time they might be useful. That’s the nature and the practice and the process of assemblage.”

But that’s also, he added later, “what life is. We take it all in and we push it right back out in some other form.” For Outterbridge, his art is a creativity, a philosophy, a politics, an education—and “a celebration.” It’s “an affirmation of life.”

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