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 …
Photo provided to NEA in 2006 by Esther Martinez; used here courtesy of NEA Folk and Traditional Arts division. Native American (Tewa Pueblo), Linguistics, Education, Cultural Activism Esther Martinez (P’oe Tsáwa) (1912-2006) Esther Martinez was born in 1912 to parents who worked in the fields in Ignacio, Colorado. After she was five, her grandparents raised …
Image from The University of New Mexico Newsroom Mexican American, Folklore, Music, Lexicography Rubén Cobos (1911-2010) At age 16, Rubén Cobos and his penniless family arrived in Albuquerque from San Antonio, to say goodbye to his older sister Consuelo, a Presbyterian teacher who died from TB in a sanatorium a month later. Having escaped Piedras …
Photo from the cover of Social Change in Contemporary China: C.K. Yang and the Concept of Institutional Diffusion, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006. Chinese American, Sociologist Ch’ing-k’un (CK) Yang (Yáng Qìngkūn) (1911-1999) Also known as Ch’ing-K’un Yang; Qingkun Yang, C. K. Yang was a sociologist whose work contributed to scholarship about religious life in China …
Photographer unknown. Circa 1960. Photo from Tuskegee University Archives. African American, Ethnography, Sociology Lewis Wade Jones (1910-1979) Dr. Lewis Wade Jones was one of the major ethnographers of Southern rural Black life in the 20th century, at a time when formerly enslaved Blacks transitioned from sharecropping to more mechanized ways of living and work. Lewis …
Portrait of Dr. Lawrence D. Reddick, professor of history. Courtesy of Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia, PA. African American, Ethnography, History Lawrence Reddick (1910-1995) Dr. Lawrence Dunbar Reddick was an internationally acclaimed historian, intellectual, and educator. His transformative documentation of the lives, struggles, and cultures of Black people spans much of the …
Photo from the Francis L. K. Hsu Facebook page Chinese American, Anthropology, Folklore Francis L. K. Hsu (Xu Langguang) (1909-1999) Francis Hsu is generally known as an anthropologist. His psychological approach to folklore and folklife and his ideas about diasporic Chinese communities have not only expanded anthropological studies, but also influenced studies of Overseas Chinese, …
Photo by Studio Iris. Katherine Dunham in a 1960s publicity photograph. Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200003727/ African American, Dance, Ethnography, Theater Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) Katherine Dunham, one of the first dance anthropologists and Black modern dance choreographers, was an accomplished teacher, dance scholar, …
Richard Wright by Gordon Parks, May 1943. Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Reproduction Number: LC-USW3-030278-D African American, Federal Writers’ Project, Literature Richard Nathaniel Wright (1908-1960) Richard Wright, acclaimed author, and recognized leader of the Chicago Renaissance (1935- 1950) conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Black communities of Chicago …
Photo by Bill Wunsch, Denver Post staff photographer, published March 26, 1968. African American, Music, Literature John Lovell, Jr. (1907-1974) Born in Asheville, North Carolina, on July 25, 1907, Dr. John Lovell, Jr. was a prolific scholar and researcher who specialized in the influence of the African diaspora on music, arts, literature, and drama. Lovell …