Photographer unknown; photo sourced from prabook.com African American, Ethnography, Anthropology John Gwaltney (1928-1998) John Langston Gwaltney was a native anthropologist and folklorist whose scholarship chronicled the everyday lives of marginalized communities. Gwaltney was born in 1928 in Orange, New Jersey, as one of five children, to John Stanley Gwaltney, a merchant seaman, and Mabel Harper …
In Search of Blueprints: The Making of an African American Literary Critic … Stephen E. Henderson : a Symposium on African American Literary and Intellectual Thought. Program in African American Culture, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1993. African American, Cultural Activism, Literary Theory Stephen E. Henderson (1925-1997) Dr. Stephen Henderson was an HBCU (historically Black …
Photograph by Allan Warren taken in Hyde Park, London, 1969 African American, Literature, Cultural History James Baldwin (1924-1987) A prolific writer, activist, cultural theorist, James Arthur Baldwin was born on August 2, 1924, in Harlem, New York, to Emma Berdis Jones, a single mother. His mother married David Baldwin, a laborer and preacher, and they …
Pearl Primus, Rock Daniel, 1944, Barbara Morgan Archives African American, Dance, Ethnography, Theater Pearl Eileen Primus (1919-1994) Dr. Pearl Primus was a dancer, choreographer, educator, and anthropologist whose pioneering work not only explored and celebrated African, Caribbean, and African American dance forms and folkways, but also called attention to social issues faced by people of …
Self-portrait by Robert McNeill African American, Documentary Photography, Federal Writers’ Project Robert H. McNeill (1917-2005) Robert H. McNeill was a renowned photographer of Black life and culture from the 1930s through the 1970s. Born in 1917 in Washington, DC, to Dr. William C. McNeill, a physician and medical educator and Mary A. McNeill, a DC …
Photo from Georgia Center for the Book African American, Federal Writers’ Project, Literature Frank Yerby (1916-1991) Dr. Frank Yerby wrote 33 popular historical romance novels that challenged white conceptions of Southern history and culture. He was the first African American to have one of his novels adapted into a commercial movie. Earlier in his career, …
Women of courage : an exhibition of photographs based on the Black Women Oral History Project, by Judith Sedwick; sponsored by the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College. [Cambridge, Mass.] : Radcliffe College, c1984. HOLLIS collection-level record: 007598802 African American, Federal Writers’ Project, Literature Margaret Walker Alexander …
Ralph Ellison, photographed in 1960 by a United States Information Agency staff photographer. NARA reference number 306-PSA-61-8989. African American, Federal Writers’ Project, Literature Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) Ralph Waldo Ellison worked as an interviewer and researcher in New York City’s Federal Writers’ Project, documenting African American urban history and folklore on his way to becoming an …
Photo by Gordon Parks African American, Documentary Photography, Film, Music Gordon Parks (1912-2006) Gordon Roger Alexander Buchanan Parks was born the youngest of fifteen children in Fort Scott, Kansas, in 1912. His parents, Andrew Jackson Parks and Sarah Ross Parks, made a modest living through farming. After his mother’s death, Parks left home at age …
