Guests at a breakfast party for Langston Hughes in 1925 including E. Franklin Frazier, Hubert Delany and Rudolph Fisher. hosted by Regina Anderson (Andrews) and Ethel Ray at 580 St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem. Photo: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. just being… Martin. In January and February 1967, Dr. King wrote the first draft of his final book, “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?” in Ocho Rios, Jamaica at a rented, secluded house with no telephone. He was joined by his wife, Coretta Scott King, his aide, Rev. Bernard Lee, and his secretary, Dora McDonald. The pictures I used for this collage and more appeared in the June 1967 issue of Ebony magazine. According to the article, Dr. King responded to news reports about him taking a vacation by saying, “I’m working as hard as ever. I’d like a vacation when I finish the book.”
Diana Ross, pregnant with her daughter, @TraceeEllisRoss, in 1972. Photo via Tracee Ellis Ross’s Pinterest page.
Happy Veterans Day! Thank you to each and every veteran who reads this page and gratitude to those who served who are no longer with us. In this photo, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Harriet Ida Pickens (left) and Ensign Frances Wills, the Navy’s first African-American “WAVES” officers, are shown after graduating from the Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School (WR) at Northampton, Massachusetts, in December 1944. Photo: Official U.S. Navy Photograph, National Archives.
Legendary artist Jacob Lawrence in his days as a Coastguardsman on March 27, 1945 in Boston. He was at the Institute of Modern Art in Boston for a showing of his paintings (he is shown with one of his most famous works, “Ironers,” a gouache on paper from 1943. Photo: Bettman/Corbis
The one and only Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born on this day 90 years ago in Cleveland, Ohio. She is pictured at home in 1954 in a photo by Allan Grant. Photo: Time & Life Pictures/Getty.
I am a bit obsessed with this awesome picture. It’s Hilda Simms, Langston Hughes (bottom right) and actor Canada Lee (center in white shirt) at a party with other artists around 1944. I recognize the women on the left - but I am drawing a blank on their names so, if you know, please let me know in the comment section. Photo by George Karger/Pix Inc./Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
Two sailors from the the USS Mason (DE-529), the first US Navy ship to have a predominantly African-American crew on March 20, 1944. Photo: Corbis
People voting in the 1952 presidential election in Harlem on November 4, 1952. Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, circa late 1930’s, in her church hat and favorite coat after arriving in Chicago. Ms. Gladney is one of the central characters in Isabel Wilkerson’s fascinating account of the Great Migration, “The Warmth of Other Suns.” From the book: “When every vote counts: FDR was in a tight race for reelection, Nov. 1940. Ida Mae Gladney was new to Chicago. “For weeks, precinct captains and ward volunteers had canvassed the tenements on the South Side of Chicago. Suddenly everyone around her was talking about something she’d never heard of back in Mississippi.” She had never touched a ballot before, never been allowed to. She would cast the first vote of her life in a razor thin race where FDR needed every vote he could get….” (To Be Continued….) — from The Warmth of Other Suns
Aretha Franklin rehearses steps with the legendary dancer and choreographer Charles “Cholly” Atkins at a dance studio in 1961. Mr. Atkins (1913-2003) created the iconic dance moves of The Temptations, Gladys Knight and the Pips and The Supremes’s famous “Stop! In the Name of Love” hand movement. The Alabama-born Mr. Atkins began his career as a vaudeville performer and was one half of the legendary dance duo Coles and Atkins with Honi Coles. In 1988, he shared a Tony Awards for choreographing the Broadway show, “Black and Blue.” Photo: Frank Driggs Collection/Getty Images.
Muhammad Ali and his then wife Veronica chat with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at a party at the Rainbow Room in New York City to kick off the Robert F. Kennedy Tennis Tournament on August 26, 1977. Photo: Bettman/Corbis
