Vintage Black Glamour

Donna Summer, the late great Boston-born “Queen of Disco” and all-around musical genius, Quincy Jones, are seen here in 1983 at the Savoy Theater in New York City. Both were 2013 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on April 18, 2013. Photo: Walter McBride/Corbis.

At the White House screening for the new “42” movie, Michelle Obama had this to say about Rachel Robinson, wife of baseball legend Jackie Robinson: “She’s a woman of strength, of courage, conviction; a woman who paved the way for me, but she paved the way for millions of Americans all across this country.” I am attending a private screening of the movie tonight in Manhattan and I could not agree more! In this September 23, 1947 photo, Mrs. Robinson is with her husband in Brooklyn as he accepts keys from the legendary dancer, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, to a car he won just before a game against the San Francisco Giants. Photo: Bettman/Corbis.

Georgia Carr was a singer, actress and eventual entrepreneur. Born Mary Louise Thomas in Los Angeles on June 20, 1925, she held multiple jobs (most famously as a secretary) and attended the University of California in Los Angeles as she tried to build her singing career. She was singing at the Club Royale in San Diego when Stan Kenton saw her and, according to the August 20, 1953 cover story on her in JET, “started her on a career that was destined to hit the big time.” According to JET, it was Mr. Kenton who suggested that she change her name to Georgia Carr. In short order, she was booked in popular clubs like Birdland and La Vie En Rose in New York and recorded a few modest hits, including “Softly” and I’m Not Gonna Let You In.” She also had a radio show at one time on New Yorks WOV called “Carr-fare.” The most interesting piece of information I came across regarding Ms. Carr was from a Chicago Defender newspaper article from January 29, 1963. The article said Ms. Carr “possess beauty, personality, “class,” and a warm, husky voice of intimate styling” and noted that she was being “sought for a tour of the Orient, which would take her to Manila, Tokyo and Hong Kong.” Ms. Carr told the paper that she would probably turn down the tour in favor of a new business where she was vice president in charge of sales. It was called American Negro Commercials, Inc. and they wanted to make “television and theatrical commercials utilizing Negro actors and models.” Ms. Carr is quoted as saying, “There is no reason why our actors and actresses can’t do commercials for major companies which sell their products on the general market. I am more excited by this project than anything I have ever done.” I have no idea what became of American Negro Commercials - but I will find out! In later years, Ms. Carr apparently owned a catering company with her sister. A 1971 article in the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper described a reception in honor of the pianist Bobby Short where a “black-owned catering firm owned by singer Georgia Carr and her sister served memorable cuisine.” Ms. Carr died in Los Angeles at the age of 46 of a stroke on July 4, 1971.

A 1970s Ultra Sheen advertisement.

Richetta Randolph Wallace, circa 1930. She was private secretary to Mary White Ovington, a writer, suffragist and one of the founders of the NAACP. She was also private secretary to James Weldon Johnson, attorney, poet, author (“Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man) and composer of “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing”) and the executive secretary of the NAACP, Walter White. Born in Virginia in 1884, Ms. Randolph moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn in 1933 and remained until her death in 1971. Photo: Brooklyn Historical Society

Actor Graham Brown, pictured on one of his actor composite photos from the 1960s. Born Robert Elwood Brown in Harlem on October 24, 1924, Mr. Brown was an actor whose career spanned more than five decades. A World War II veteran, he began acting in Army shows before enrolling in college at Howard University, where he was a member of the Howard University Players theater group and graduated in 1949. Over the last few months, I have had the honor of analyzing and organizing Mr. Brown’s personal collection of photographs, papers and other historically and culturally relevant ephemera, for donation to a major institution on behalf of his family. I could hardly believe my eyes at some of the things I held in my hands in the Harlem office where I spent hours examining Mr. Brown’s collection: a personal letter to Mr. Brown from Harold Jackman, a prominent Harlem Renaissance figure. Mr. Brown’s Howard Players member card, programs from their plays, and a photo of them in Norway at the home of the Norwegian ambassador, surrounding him at his piano in 1949. There are pages and pages of Mr. Brown’s writing: attempts at poems, short stories, English homework and drafts of articles he wrote for Howard’s school newspaper, “The Hilltop” and copies of the actual newspapers. There are Columbia University bursar’s receipts from 1952 (he briefly attended graduate school there) and show programs, posters, tickets, letters and photos from much of his life and career. Mr. Brown was a member of the Negro Ensemble Company, where he worked with actors such as Roxie Roker (his Howard classmate) in “The River Niger,” Laurence Fishburne and Esther Rolle. He was also in several productions of the Greenwich Mews Theater, a theater famous for it’s integrated productions in the 1950s and a member of the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. In the 1960s and 1970s, made several appearances on Broadway (Gore Vidal’s “Weekend”) and with Joseph’s Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival, including “The Black Picture Show” in 1975. His film credits included “Malcolm X,” “Clockers,” “Sanford & Son,” and “Law & Order.” Mr. Brown died on December 13, 2011 at the age of 87.

Dancers Carmen de Lavallade and Geoffrey Holder (followed by Ms. de Lavallade’s sister, Elaine de Lavallade and Emery Lewis) on their wedding day, June 26, 1955. The wedding was hosted by theater legend Lucille Lortel at her estate in Westport, Connecticut and notables like Diahann Carroll, Josephine Premice, and Carl Van Vechten. Mr. Van Vechten’s assistant at the time, Saul Mauriber, took this photograph. Via:Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

A Twitter fan tweeted this awesome shot I shared last year of the one and only Malcolm X in Chicago in 1961. The picture was taken by the legendary photographer Eve Arnold who died on January 4, 2012 at the age of 99, just three months short of her 100th birthday. I’m pretty sure this is my favorite picture of Malcolm X.

Happy Birthday William Smokey Robinson! Can you believe he turns 73 today? In this photo, he is standing in front of Motown’s original office in Detroit, around 1967. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives.

Melba Roy, NASA Mathmetician, at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland in 1964. Ms. Roy, a 1950 graduate of Howard University, led a group of NASA mathmeticians known as “computers” who tracked the Echo satellites. The first time I shared Ms. Roy on VBG, my friend Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a former postdoc in astrophysics at NASA, helpfully explained what Ms. Roy did in the comment section. I am sharing Chanda’s comment again here: “By the way, since I am a physicist, I might as well explain a little bit about what she did: when we launch satellites into orbit, there are a lot of things to keep track of. We have to ensure that gravitational pull from other bodies, such as other satellites, the moon, etc. don’t perturb and destabilize the orbit. These are extremely hard calculations to do even today, even with a machine-computer. So, what she did was extremely intense, difficult work. The goal of the work, in addition to ensuring satellites remained in a stable orbit, was to know where everything was at all times. So they had to be able to calculate with a high level of accuracy. Anyway, that’s the story behind orbital element timetables”. Photo: NASA/Corbis.

Baseball legend Jackie Robinson is helped into his jacket by his wife Rachel, circa 1950s, just before he leaves for the ball park. The Robinsons were married for 26 years before his death in 1972. Photo: Bettman/Corbis.