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The visual history of early 20th-century America has largely been told through black-and-white photography. But with meticulous colorization techniques and research, we're able to render the past in vivid color. Here, Texas Guinan, a flamboyant figure who ran New York's 300 Club during Prohibition, lives up to her reputation as a symbol of the Roaring '20s.

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Adding color to black-and-white footage may seem unnecessary, but its importance lies in the accuracy and resonance it lends to historical records. It's also a painstaking technical process that often lends an immediacy and vividness to far-off moments in history. Seen above, a toddler enjoys a handful of Wheaties, which became the most popular cereal in the 1920s.

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Employment segregation was still rife by the 1930s, and many men and women were denied jobs as a result. One option for work was on Pullman trains, which were staffed by uniformed, predominantly black porters, like this man above. In 1925, they banded together to create the first African-American union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

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In 1905, a young Franklin D. Roosevelt married Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin. Even at such a young age, Eleanor's poise and personality leaps from the confines of this restored print, taken shortly after her wedding day. It's easy to imagine her as the future First Lady who would go on to transcend her role and become a formidable stateswoman.

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In the late '40s, Las Vegas was a small town dreaming big: Despite a population of just 20,000, it had vice-like draws, like shotgun weddings, even quicker divorces, and legalized gambling. In 1946, mob boss Bugsy Siegel, seen here in typically fashionable attire, opened the city's first luxury hotel and casino: the 105-room, six-million-dollar Flamingo.

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Despite a Supreme Court decision in 1954, the majority of schools in the South remained segregated. Three years later, the NAACP forced the issue by selecting nine black students to enroll at an all-white high school in Little Rock, Arkansas. Here they are in this restored photo with the then-president of the NAACP.

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It's the 1950s, and "rock 'n' roll," a genre that takes from traditional African-American rhythm and blues, sweeps the nation. Record producers like Sam Phillips (above) seek to capitalize on and sell it to a young white audience by signing young talent, like Jerry Lee Lewis (above) and Elvis, who go on to become national sensations overnight.

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Former soldier and future real estate mogul William Levitt returned to the U.S. from WWII with a plan: to use military methods to mass-produce affordable homes. Levitt--seen here in a restored photo--would go on to revolutionize construction and boost home ownership in communities that he, and the press, would later dub "Levittowns," as known as suburbs.

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While the 1960s was a decade awash with color photographs, many iconic pictures were taken in black and white. Here's one example of the latter, painstakingly colorized, of Martin Luther King Jr. in a Birmingham, Alabama jail in 1967, four years after his first stay there where he wrote the powerful 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.'