Pioneering model Helen Williams, hands down, the most photographed Black model of the 1950s and 1960s, in a 1960s Kodak advertisement.

blkgirlblogging:

nerd4music:

bb Maya Rudolph is not here for your foolishness.

at all. 

Minnie Riperton and her daughter Maya Rudolph. I’ll bet Minnie would be just thrilled at how Maya turned out. The photo was taken by Jeffrey Henson Scales, Minnie’s road manager and a former photography editor at the New York Times. 

(Source: surlytemple, via autumnsdaily)

Mary Lou Williams at a 1942 jam session at the studio of LIFE magazine photographer Gjon Mili. Mili hosted several legendary jam sessions with jazz icons throughout the 1940s. Photo: TIME & LIFE Pictures

Roland Hayes, the brilliant tenor who became the first African-American man to earn international fame as a concert vocalist, photographed by Addison Scurlock in 1940. Born to former slaves in Curryville, Georgia in 1887, he attended Fisk University and briefly toured with the Fisk Jubilee Singers. Early in his career, he was turned down by talent managers because he was Black so, he invested in himself: He raised money and arranged and financed his own concert performances,which included Negro spirituals, lieder and arias by Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and Mozart. In 1942, Mr. Hayes’s wife, Helen and daughter, Afrika, sat in a whites-only area of a shoe store and were thrown out of the store. When Mr. Hayes defended his family, he was beaten and he and his wife were arrested - and the governor of Georgia was absolutely fine with it. The incident inspired Langston Hughes to compose the poem, Roland Hayes Beaten. Mr. Hayes would later teach at Boston University and would go on to celebrate more than 50 years on the concert stage before his death in 1977.

Actress Fredi Washington holding a cigarette, photographed by Robert Scurlock of the venerable  Scurlock Studio of Washington, DC, circa 1940s. Photo via The Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History.

holdthisphoto:

Tintype of James Weldon Johnson’s mother and sister: Helen Louise Johnson and Agnes Marion Edwards, 1870

Tintype of James Weldon Johnson’s mother and sister: Helen Louise Johnson and Agnes Marion Edwards, 1870. 

(via backtothefiveanddime)

Eartha Kitt, photographed by Gordon Parks, with her two cats.

waheedpix:

Ladies in Fur Collared Coats

[Sharpe Family Album]

©WaheedPhotoArchive, 2012

Ladies in Fur Collared Coats.

Melba Moore, seated in a nude pose, July 1971 by Jack Robinson.  The photo, which appeared in the October 15, 1971 issue of Vogue, was taken as Ms. Moore was touring the country after appearing on Broadway in “Hair” and “Purlie.” 

Eartha Kitt, snapped by Charles “Teenie” Harris in May 1966, leaping though a poster to launch a Citizens Committee on Hill District Renewal program on Vine and Colwell Streets in Pittsburgh, PA. Get thee to the Carnegie Museum of Art before April 7, 2012 people! 

Stunning shot of Nina Simone by Pittsburgh photography icon Charles “Teenie” Harris, circa 1965. 

Charles “Teenie” Harris (1908-1998) was a photographer who captured the full-spectrum of African American life for over forty years, primarily as one of the principal photographers for the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper. Few photographers anywhere captured us so well: from family life to beauty contests to sporting events, social life, civil rights demonstrations and visiting celebrities, Mr. Harris was there with the Speed Graphic camera that he would use well into the 1970s. 

Teenie Harris, Photographer: An American Story is an exhibition of this icon’s work hosted by the Carnegie Museum of Art until April 7, 2012. If you don’t think you’ll make it to Pittsburgh in time, you can see some images from the exhibition here.