Photo courtesy of Chinese American, Documentary Photography, Activism Young Kwok (Corky) Lee (1947-2021) Yan Phou Lee was a writer and editor who wrote the first book published in English by an author of Asian descent in the US. His book, When I Was a Boy in China (1887), was an autoethnography of his childhood and …
Photo courtesy of Porter’s wife, Joyce African American, Documentary Photography J. Nash Porter (1942-2007) J. Nash Porter was an award-winning documentary photographer of African American life in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the African Diaspora. J. Nash Porter was born and raised in New Orleans in an uptown neighborhood. After completing high school, he joined the …
Julius Lester speaks after receiving his Samuel Minot Jones Award for Local Literary Achievement. Photo courtesy of Jones Library, Amherst MA African American, Literature, Children’s Folklore, Media, Documentary photography Julius Lester (1939-2018) Julius Lester was a dynamic writer whose career spanned multiple genres over several decades. He is especially acclaimed for his works about African …
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 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 …