Set of 44 lantern slides produced by the Committee on Conservation and Advance of the Methodist Episcopal Church (MEC) that document the daily life of African Americans during the early years of the Great Migration from the rural American South, as well as outreach activities conducted by the MEC to assist them with finding work and social services. The first slides show scenes of Black sharecroppers picking cotton and processing sugar. Other slides show African Americans at work in northern cities. A majority of the slides show African American Methodist Episcopal church buildings in cities, such as Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., as well as community houses run by the MEC. Other slides show African Americans engaged in job training, such as sewing and dressmaking, and in worship and recreational activities.

Paper labels on each slide include negative number, slide number, abbreviated set title ("Negro-City" or "Negro City"), and caption. Printed on the mounts of slides 14 and 30 is the statement "The property of the Board of Home Missions and Extension of the Methodist Episcopal Church ... Philadelphia, Pa." Printed on the mount of slide 37 is "Property of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church ... New York City."

The slides were originally housed in a black cloth-covered wooden carrying case. Stenciled on the lid is "Negro-City" and "18." The set is accompanied by a published catalog, "The Negro in the City," by William Watkins Reid, which includes lecture notes for each slide. The lastest date that appears in the text is 1922, suggesting that the slides were probably produced that year.

The set is lacking slide 18 (negative no. H26995), which is listed in the accompanying catalog with the caption "St. Paul's Church, San Antonio." A photograph of St. Paul's Church captioned with the same negative number appears in the album titled "Negro #4" in the Mission Album Collection of the General Commission on Archives and History of the United Methodist Church. The same image also appears (without negative number) in "The World Service of the Methodist Episcopal Church" (1923), page 369.