Happy 82nd Birthday Toni Morrison!!! Chester Higgins, Jr. captured her here sometime in the 1970s. Photo: Getty.
Langston Hughes, always a Vintage Black Glamour favorite, was born 111 years ago today in Joplin, Missouri. This 1932 photograph was taken by his good friend, Carl Van Vechten and was eventually given as a gift by another friend, the illustrator Prentiss Taylor, to the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution.
Zora Neale Hurston, born on this day in 1891, wrote these words in her 1950 essay, What White Publishers Won’t Print. ”For various reasons, the average, struggling, non-morbid Negro is the best-kept secret in America. His revelation to the public is the thing needed to do away with that feeling of difference which inspires fear, and which ever expresses itself in dislike. It is inevitable that this knowledge will destroy many illusions and romantic traditions which America probably likes to have around. But then, we have no record of anybody sinking into a lingering death on finding out that there was no Santa Claus. The old world will take it in its stride. The realization that Negroes are no better nor no worse, and at times just as bonny as everybody else, will hardly kill off the population of the nation.” This photo was taken on November 9, 1934 in Chicago by Carl Van Vechten. Via Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Actress, singer, model and poet Mauryne Brent on the January 26, 1956 cover of JET. A star of the 1948 film Come On, Cowboy! with Mantan Moreland, she was a cousin of jazz pianist Billy Taylor. She is included in her half-sister Shirlee Taylor Haizlip’s critically-acclaimed memoir, The Sweeter the Juice: A Family Memoir in Black and White: “Mauryn was an honor student and the class poet, but she wanted a career in show business. Hollywood would not find a place for her, however. The studios told her she was too light and beautiful to be black, and too “exotic” to be white. Independent producers wanted to take her to Europe, but she resisted and turned her attention to the Negro films called “race movies” at that time.”
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
Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Diahann Carroll and Harry Belafonte in the same photo? YES! Mr. Hughes wrote the script and Mr. Belafonte produced this television special called “The Strollin’ 20’s”, a celebration of the Harlem Renaissance. The show aired on CBS on February 21, 1966 and this iconic photo was taken by Rowland Scherman.
From left: Comedian George Kirby, Sidney Poitier, singer Gloria Lynne, Langston Hughes (he wrote the script for the show!), Harry Belafonte, singer Joe Williams, Diahann Carroll, Nipsey Russell, Paula Kelly and, yes, Duke Ellington.
Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Diahann Carroll and Harry Belafonte in the same photo? YES! Mr. Hughes wrote the script and Mr. Belafonte produced this television special called “The Strollin’ 20’s”, a celebration of the Harlem Renaissance. The show aired on CBS on February 21, 1966.
From left: Comedian George Kirby, Sidney Poitier, singer Gloria Lynne, Langston Hughes (he wrote the script for the show!), Harry Belafonte, singer Joe Williams, Diahann Carroll, Nipsey Russell, Paula Kelly and, yes, Duke Ellington.
Cicely Tyson, James Baldwin, Arthur Mitchell (dancer and founder,Dance Theatre of Harlem) and Harry Belafonte attend the “To Be Young, Gifted And Black” gala on January 2, 1969 at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York City. Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage.
Lorraine Hansberry is captured by Gordon Parks chatting with the pianist at a party in honor of her play ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ at the now legendary Manhattan restaurant, Sardi’s in March 1959. Photo: Gordon Parks/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
I am currently reading “The Life of Langston Hughes, Volume 1: 1902-1941” by Arnold Rampersad so, especially as I work on the Vintage Black Glamour book, Langston Hughes is often on my mind. In this photo by Nickolas Muray taken in 1923, Mr. Hughes was about 21 years old.
Langston Hughes and Dorothy West, on their way to Russia in 1933, photographed by Carl Van Vechten.
Langston Hughes, Charles S. Johnson, E. Franklin Frazier, Rudolph Fisher and Hubert Delany (brother of the Delaney Sisters) overlooking St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem in the 1920s. Photo via the Schomburg Center.
