Although not an African American newspaper, I have used the Brooklyn Daily Eagle on multiple occasions, and even have it as part of an exercise in my course "Finding African American Ancestors in Newspapers" at Family Tree University.

When doing coal mining research I have searched the Eagle (and other papers) using proximity searches such as "negro and miner", "negro and strikebreaking", etc. Also I did the same when looking for my ancestors in the tiny town of Braidwood Illinois, the scene of an 1877 strike and got a number of hits.

However Joy, I am not aware of your photo collection.