Portraits of Black life paint a picture of American history. There are the iconic photos we remember of the civil rights movement: Rosa Parks on a bus, Ruby Bridges being escorted by U.S. marshals from her elementary school in New Orleans, Martin Luther King Jr. giving his I Have A Dream speech. There are the protest images of Tommie Smith and John Carlos holding up Black Power fists at the 1968 Olympics, of demonstrators holding I Am A Man signs in Memphis, of a man running ahead of a pack of police officers in Baltimore.

But just as important as the big history-making moments are the small moments of everyday life captured by Black photographers. The Gordon Parks image of a woman and child outside a department store in Mobile, Alabama. Florestine Perrault Collins portraits of family friends in New Orleans. The James Van Der Zee portraits of Black New Yorkers.

In that spirit, photographers Michael A. McCoy , Ruddy Roye , Vanessa Charlot , Kay Hickman and Kenneth McFarlane Jr. have spent Black History Month sharing images of Black people living their everyday lives who might otherwise have gone unseen. A grandmother in Miamis gentrifying Liberty City neighborhood. A man waving an American flag in Times Square on Election Day. An urban farmer in Philadelphia.

The role of the Black photographer has been to disrupt the photographic landscape by sharing photographs of Black people free of the white gaze, Charlot, who is based in Miami, told HuffPost. In doing so, Black photographers are able to restore the dignity of people who are often presented in the public space divorced from context, motives and histories.

This photo essay offers an intimate look at Black life through the eyes of Black photographers and speaks to why Black photographers are integral to recording history.