Panels from the original 2019 exhibit.
Photo courtesy of Anthony Bak Buccitelli Chinese American Fieldworker and Writer Jon Y. Lee (1915–1987) Jon Y. Lee (also known as Jon Leyim) was the son of Chinese immigrants who settled in Oakland, California. As a recent high school graduate of Oakland Technical High School, he was hired by Paul Radin as a fieldworker for …
Published by NYU Press Chinese American Sociologist and Ethnographer Paul Chan Pang Siu (1906–1987) Paul Chan Pang Siu was born in Guangzhou (Canton) near the coast of the South China Sea in 1906 to an affluent farming family. After their family wealth declined in the early decades of the 20th century, when Chan Pang Siu …
Portrait of Jovita González, 1931. E. E. Mireles and Jovita González Mireles Papers, Special Collections and Archives, Mary and Jeff Bell Library, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Mexican American Folklorist, Educator, and Writer Jovita González Mireles (1904–1983) Jovita González Mireles was born in 1904 on her grandparents’ ranch in Roma, Texas. A pioneering folklorist, educator, and …
Photo courtesy of the Rael Family Hispano New Mexican Folklorist, and Linguist Juan Bautista Rael (1900–1993) Juan Bautista Rael was born in Arroyo Hondo, New Mexico. He was highly regarded for his pioneering work in collecting and documenting the Hispano folk stories, plays, and religious traditions of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Since local …
Nanticoke Chief Russel Clark and Gladys Tantaquidgeon (Mohegan), 1925, Frederick Johnson photograph collection, NMAI.AC.001.038, Item N14739, National Museum of the American Indian Archive Center, Smithsonian Institution. Mohegan Medicine Woman and Anthropologist Gladys Iola Tantaquidgeon (1899–2005) Starting at age five, Gladys Iola Tantaquidgeon began to be educated in Mohegan teachings to become a medicine woman. Having …
Photo courtesy of the Cuban Heritage Collection, University of Miami Libraries, Coral Gables, Florida. Lydia Cabrera Papers, CHC0339. Afro-Cuban Folklorist, Ethnologist, Writer, and Literary Activist Lydia Cabrera (1899–1991) Lydia Cabrera was one of the first writers to recognize and make public the richness of Afro-Cuban culture. She made valuable contributions in the areas of anthropology …
Photo courtesy of the Texas A&M University-Commerce Archives African American Folklorist and Poet John Mason Brewer (1896–1975) J. Mason Brewer was a noted educator, historian, poet, storyteller, and folklorist. Born in Goliad, Texas in 1896—a place that through the voices of his father and grandfathers instilled the love for African American stories—J. Mason Brewer devoted …
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Carl Van Vechten Collection, [LC-DIG-van-5a52142] African American Folklorist, Anthropologist, Novelist, and Dramatist Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) Zora Neale Hurston was a preeminent African American folklorist, ethnographer, and creative writer of Black life in the U.S. South and Caribbean. Zora Neale Hurston was born in …
Photo courtesy of Philip Deloria Yankton Dakota Anthropologist, Linguist, and Writer Ella C. Deloria (Anpetu Wastéwin) (1889–1971) Ella C. Deloria, named Anpetu Wastéwin (Beautiful Day Woman) in Dakota, was born to a prominent Yankton Dakota family in 1889 on the Yankton Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. Her father, one of the first Sioux Episcopal priests, …
Photo courtesy of the Penn Museum, image no. 12562 “Situwaka (Louis Shotridge)– Hereditary Chief of the Raven Clan, of the Chilkat Tribe — in the Ceremonial Costume of a War-Lord.” Portrait of Louis Shotridge taken in the Penn Museum, 1912. Clothing shown in photograph is now part of the collections of the National Museum of …