Vintage Black Glamour

Coretta Scott King was born 86 years ago today in Marion, Alabama. Mrs. King was a graduate of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio (B.A. Music Education, 1951) and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston (Mus.B. in voice, 1954). In this photo, she is flashing the peace sign at an anti-war rally at the White House on May 9, 1970. She was one of over 100,000 demonstrators who attended the rally to protest the war in Vietnam and Cambodia. Photo: Benjamin E. “Gene” Forte/CNP/Corbis.

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

Lena Horne speaking on a panel at Bethune-Cookman College (now University), the school founded by Mary McLeod Bethune in Daytona Beach, Florida in 1964. I don’t know what the topic of the panel was that day, but I do know that Mary McLeod Bethune was a family friend to Ms. Horne. These pictures were taken by Robert Sengstacke, of the Chicago publishing family that founded the Chicago Defender newspaper. Mr. Sengstacke was a student at Bethune-Cookman at the time. Photos: Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images.

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.

Pioneering educator Nannie Helen Burroughs (1879-1961) sometime in the 1910s. Born in Orange, Virginia, Ms. Burroughs graduated with honors from the Colored High School, which would later become M Street School and then Dunbar High School. Best know as the founder of the National Trade and Professional School for Women and Girls, Ms. Burroughs was an early advocate for teaching African American History and students had to pass a course in black history in order to graduate. A member of the National Association of Colored Women among other civic and religious advocacy groups, Ms. Burroughs was appointed to a special committee on African Americans and housing by President Herbert Hoover. Also a leader in religion, she helped found the Women’s Auxiliary of the National Baptist Convention. 

Ms. Burroughs also had a special connection to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. A longtime friend of his parents, Ms. Burroughs wrote a letter to Dr. King’s mother, Mrs. Alberta King on February 4, 1956 during the course of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and told her how impressed she was with the “calm, sure way that Junior is standing up for right and righteousness.” Photo: The Library of Congress

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.

Happy Founders Day to the wonderful women of Alpha Kappa Alpha! The first sorority for African-American women was founded 105 years ago today at Howard Univerity, where this photo was taken in 1945 by the legendary photographer, Addison N. Scurlock (1883-1964). Photo: Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Happy Centennial to the members of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority! Delta Sigma Theta was founded 100 years ago today at Howard University, where these lovely sorors were photographed in 1930. Photo: Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Jane M. Bolin was the first Black woman graduate of Yale Law School and the first Black woman in the United States to become a judge. She is pictured here in July 1939, shortly after her appointment by New York City mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, which made news all over the world. Judge Bolin retired in 1979 after 40 years as a judge - but only because she had reached the mandatory retirement age of 70. She died at age 98 in 2007.

I thought I would share Judge Bolin again since the post I wrote last year is floating around Pinterest… ;)

It never fails: I end up looking for one thing and finding so much more. This is the Wilberforce University Quartette of 1922, Agnus Redden, Basso; H.Q. Smith, Tenor; L.O. Byrd (Director) Baritone; L.H. Berry (Manager), Tenor. Photo: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library

The women of Delta Sigma Theta at Wilberforce University in Wilberforce, Ohio in 1922. Photo: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library