In the simplest of terms, this nation’s history of memorializing Black figures consists of two phases: before photography arrived in the United States and ever since. From the introduction of the daguerreotype in 1839 up through the twentieth century, Blacks and non-Blacks used photography to signify, cement, and remember the importance of certain Black figures. Examples include Harriet Tubman, Dred Scott, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Huey Newton, and Barack Obama. This paper considers the significance of a commonality visible across the lot: sitting. The concern here is how these iconic photographs – representative of Black people, the Black past, and Black protest – function in the aggregate as an archive of Black iconicity, the central motif of which is the seated Black subject.