Kicha's photos

Sarah Anna Lewis (1846-1939), of Fall River, Massachusetts was admitted to Bridgewater State Normal School on February 19, 1867, and according to research compiled by Dr. Thomas Turner, professor of history at Bridgewater State College, Miss Lewis may have been the first African-American to graduate from the institution. She was a member of the Class of 1869. Dr. Turner discovered the information about Miss Lewis in October 2006, while researching a book he is writing on the history of the college. Until Dr. Turner found a photograph of Miss Lewis in a college album, it was believed that Mary Hudson Onley, Class of 1912, had been the first African- American to graduate from Bridgewater. Further research by Dr. Turner and by Mrs. Mabel Bates, special collections librarian in the Clement C. Maxwell Library, led to the discovery of Miss Lewis' application to Bridgewater. She was born on Feb. 20, 1846 and was a graduate of Fall River High School. She taught for three terms before coming to Bridgewater State Normal School, which, according to Dr. Turner, was not uncommon in the 19th century. Subsequent information about Miss Lewis, uncovered by Dr. Philip Silvia, professor of history at Bridgewater State College, revealed that after her graduation she taught in Fall River for two years. She taught at the "1st Div. Intermediate" school level, commencing with her March 1869 appointment and continued teaching during the next academic year. On May 11, 1871, she married Edward A.Williams and forfeited her teaching career because married women could not teach in public schools during this era. She subsequently became the mother of three children. Her husband was a cook and baker and established a catering business, but difficult economic circumstances in Fall River led the Williams family to move to Manhattan in the late 1870s. Later, they moved to the Boston area where Sarah helped support her family by working as a seamstress and dressmaker. She lived to the age of 92, passing away on Jan. 24, 1939. Bio: Bridgewater State University Photo: Fall River Historical Society

Mary Henrietta Graham was born in 1858 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She was the first African American woman admitted to the University of Michigan and the first woman of color to graduate. In 1880 she received a Bachelor’s of Philosophy in literature. In 1882 she married Ferdinand Lee Barnett, an attorney and civil rights activist. The couple moved to Chicago and worked on Barnett’s paper the Chicago Conservator, which was the first Black Newspaper in the city. Graham later died in 1890. Her husband stayed in Chicago and eventually married Ida B. Wells, the famous anti-lynching activist. Bachelor of Philosophy and Literature Michigan Historical Society

Townline School, Packard Station. Despite the rise in segregation across the country because of the growing strength of Jim Crow laws, Covert's schools continued to be integrated. The school was never segregated. Source: A Stronger Kinship: One Town's Extraordinary Story of Hope and Faith by Anna-Lisa Cox

All tuxed out .... photographed at Studio Piaz.

Josephine in London, photographed for Harper's Bazaar. [ Photographer, Peter Rose Pulham, Josephine Baker; Compilation by Bryan Hammond ]

Portrait of a very young handsome man photographed during WWI. Name unknown. "A Saga of the Black Man" by Rosetta Lucas Quisenberry

This is a reprinted daguerreotype originally photographed in the 1850s and reproduced as a cabinet card photograph in the 1880s. The young woman is identified as Jane Agnes (Thompson) Schuyler, aged 18. Excelsior Art Gallery - Monaco Brothers Photography out of Stockton, California. [ebay]

Formal portrait of two African American women (names unknown) who appear to be related holding a photo album. [ Charles H. Bruce, Photographer, Courtesy of Linda Crichlow White of Washington DC ]

The Murray Brothers Printing Company, located at 920-922 U St., NW., Washington, DC, 20001. Was home to The Washington Tribune newspaper and steps away from the entrepreneurial F.H.M Murray’s other business, the Murray Palace Casino. Addison Scurlock, Photographer The three Murray brothers, part of an enterprising family, ran a successful printing business in the early 20th century, a lucrative trade in the nation's capital where the chief local business – governing – required enormous amounts of printed materials. The brothers also ran a successful ballroom, Murray's Palace Casino, in the same building. The building was designed by African American architect, Isaiah T. Hatton. Brothers Raymond, Morris, and Norman opened Murray Brothers Printing in 1908 with the support of their father, Freeman Henry Morris Murray. They published books, programs, and brochures. In 1921 they began publishing the Washington Tribune, which became the city's major black newspaper after the Washington Bee folded in 1922. At peak circulation, the Tribune printed 30,000 copies a day on the brothers' modern Goss printing press. I'm not certain when the business closed but I know through old newspaper articles that it was still up and running in the District in 1980. The Murray's other business the Palace Casino was one of the most popular clubs on U Street in the 1920s and 1930s. Social clubs vied to hold their annual balls and dances here.

The first Black women in Ettrick, Virginia to vote in 1920 were members of the Virginia State University faculty. They were from left to right in front: Mary Branch, Anna Lindsay, Edna Colson, Edwina Wright, Johnella Frazer (Jackson), and Nannie Nichols. Back row left to right: Eva Conner, Evie Carpenter (Spencer), and Odelle Green. Source: Virginia Historical Society

Orpheus McAdoo was born in Greensboro, North Carolina on January 4, 1858. He graduated from Hampton Institute in 1876, and taught school in rural Virginia for three years and then at the Hampton preparatory school for several years. In 1885, McAdoo joined Frederick Loudin's Jubilee Singers, also known as the Original Fisk Jubilee Singers, and toured with the group in London and Australia. He returned to the United States in 1889 to form his own group, the Virginia Concert Company and Jubilee Singers. Among the people he recruited were Belle F. Gibbons, his younger brother Eugene McAdoo, Madame J. Stewart Ball, his future wife Mattie E. Allen, and Moses Hamilton Hodges. Mattie E. Allen was born in Columbus, Ohio, circa 1868. After graduating from high school, she taught school, before joining Orpheus McAdoo's Virginia Concert Company and Jubilee Singers as a contralto soloist. She married McAdoo in 1891, and gave birth to a son, Myron, in 1893. Beginning in 1890, the McAdoos' Virginia Concert Company and Jubilee Singers toured the British Isles before traveling to South Africa, where they had a great deal of success, performing in large cities as well as more remote regions of the country from 1890 to 1892. In 1892, the company embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand. They returned to South Africa in 1895 for a second extended tour, at which point McAdoo transformed the group from the Virginia Concert Company and Jubilee Singers to McAdoo's Minstrel and Vaudeville Company and broadened the list of performers to include variety artists in addition to singers. McAdoo's company headed back to Australia in 1898. While the company toured Australia, McAdoo returned to the United States in 1899 to assemble a full-scale modern African American minstrel troupe, which he named the Georgia Minstrels and Alabama Cakewalkers. The newly-formed company toured Australia from 1899 to 1900. Six weeks after the end of the tour, on July 17, 1900, McAdoo died and was buried in Waverly Cemetery, Sydney. African American Studies at Yale, Beinecke Collection

Benjamin Rucker (1892 - 1934), was born in Amherst, Virginia. He met a white traveling magician, Prince Herman, who taught him magic and eventually took him on as a partner. Rucker learned how to make the "health tonic" they sold as part of the show and how to put on a successful show. When Prince Herman died in 1909, Rucker continued the show and took the name Black Herman, eventually settling in Harlem, New York. Using a combination of medicine show techniques, references to a fictional childhood in a Zulu tribe in Africa, and a taste for quoting scripture, Rucker found the performance style that worked for him. He let audience members tie him up so he could demonstrate how "If the slave traders tried to take any of my people captive, we would release ourselves using our secret knowledge." Rucker's work depended on travel from city to city to gain his fan base. When he traveled to northern states, he could perform for a racially mixed audience, which was unheard of for most towns, but in the South, he was heavily subjected to Jim Crow laws and only allowed to perform for blacks. Witnessing segregation, he became an advocate for civil rights and a freedom fighter, holding roundtable meetings at his home in Harlem and planning ways to fight the oppression. By 1923, Rucker had added "Buried Alive" to his act. At first, he would "hypnotize" a woman and then bury her six feet under for almost six hours as a publicity stunt or part of a carnival. Eventually, he himself was "Buried Alive." A few days before a major performance, Rucker would sell tickets for the public to come to a plot of ground near the theater he called "Black Herman's Private Graveyard". They could view his lifeless body and even check for a pulse—nothing. The audience would then see Black Herman's body placed in a coffin and into the grave. The night of the show, another audience was invited to attend as the body was exhumed. They saw the coffin get dug up, opened, and Rucker would emerge, alive and well. He would then walk to the theater, and the audience usually followed. In April, 1934, Rucker was performing in Louisville, Kentucky. He collapsed suddenly in the middle of his show and was declared dead of "acute indigestion." The audience didn't believe it. Black Herman had risen from the dead so many times before. The crowd refused to believe that the show was over and stayed in the theater. Eventually Rucker's body was moved to a funeral home. The crowds followed. Finally, Black Herman's assistant, Washington Reeves, decided "Let's charge admission. That's what he would have done." And they did, to thousands of people. Some people even brought pins to stick in the corpse to prove he was dead. When he was buried, "his death made front page news in black newspapers all over the country." Source: magicexhibit.org

Publicity photograph from The Freeman, An Illustrated Colored Newspaper , Sept. 10, 1910 edition. Mabel on the left and Emma on the right. Mabel (circa 1870 - ?) and Emma Griffin (1873 - 1918), were born in Louisville, Kentucky. They were the highly popular vaudeville performers known as The Griffin Sisters who toured throughout the United States. They began performing as members of John Isham's Octoroons Company and toured with several other companies before organizing their own theater booking agency in 1913 in Chicago. They had been considered premiere performers and broke theater attendance records while with the Sherman H. Dudley agency, created in 1912 as the first African American operated vaudeville circuit. The Griffin Agency was one of the earliest to be managed by African American women, and they also had a school of vaudeville art. Emma Griffin encourage African American performers to use either the Dudley Agency or the Griffin Agency. The sisters also opened the Alamon Theater in Indianapolis, Indiana, in April of 1914. They managed the Majestic Theater in Washington, D.C. in June of 1914. The sisters were listed as mulattoes, along with their brother Henry, who was a musician, and their grandmother Mary Montgomery, all in the 1910 Census when the family lived in Chicago. [Bio: Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians , by E. Southern] The Griffin sisters were also way ahead of their time ... they didn't cower quietly when mistreated. The following is an article in the San Francisco Call Newspaper dated, February 21, 1906: Two Colored Women Experience Difficulty in Getting Assailant Into Court Two colored women known in cheap, vaudeville as the Griffin sisters, Emma and Mabel, sought to have one "Billy" Pratt, a Mason street saloon-keeper, arrested on their charge of battery. They unfolded their complaint to Deputy Clerk George M. Kelly, sablewhiskered and very voluble, who informed them that the best he could do would be to request the accused to appear before him and opine whether or not a warrant should be issued. And to show that he could do that much Mr. Kelly wrote a politely worded note to Mr. Pratt and gave it to the women to deliver, despite their assertion that they were afraid they might be battered again if they confronted him. Then they were told that if they did not desire to convey, the message they might entrust Its delivery to the policeman on the beat.. When a bystander questioned Mr. Kelly's authority to act as he did the explanation was given that Judge Shortall had been asked to issue the desired warrant, but had declined to do so on the ground that Mr. Pratt was one of his personal friends and that he could not try the case without prejudice. "Then," said the meddler to Mr. Kelly, "why don't you advise the women to lay their case before one of the other Judges?" Mr. Kelly said a great deal in reply without giving logical answer to the question, and he was still talking when the interrogator went and obtained Judge Mogan's promise that he would sign the warrant. When this was stated to Mr. Kelly he declared that he would not frame the warrant unless he received Judge Mogan's written order to do so. Instead of going back to Judge Mogan, however, the busybody escorted the women to Judge Cabaniss, who heard their story and instantly signed an order that the warrant be issued. But when the trio returned with the order it was the chief of the office instead of Mr. Kelly, who took it and after considerable delay complied with it. "By what right," Mr. Kelly was asked, "does this office undertake to decide whether a warrant shall be issued?' "We do it," replied Mr. Kelly, "to relieve the Judges from the trouble of hearing applications for warrants." "But it is the prescribed duty of the Judges to experience the trouble you allude to, isn't it?" "Well, we have made a rule and we are sticking to it." said Mr. Kelly. "We don't issue a warrant for misdemeanor until we have given the accused opportunity to tell us his or her side of the story." "Thereby you .constitute, this office a. tribunal and usurp the work of the' Police Judges, don't you?" "We have made the rule and we're sticking to it," replied Mr. Kelly. "Thus it has come to pass that charges of misdemeanor are tried and decided by the Warrant Clerk or any of his deputies Instead of by a magistrate duly authorized by the charter to perform that duty. The Griffin sisters are evidently skaters In stageland only, for (Emma's countenance is, several degrees duskier than that of Mabel, whose hair is slightly "kinked and deeply dyed a beautiful antique gold hue"). They claim to have delighted large and cultured audiences in almost every city and town of considerable note, on the Pacific Coast and that they are always headlined on the bills as "Character Change Artists and Entrancing Vocalists." They were en route from a theater to their joint abode night before last when a masculine admirer of their art invited them to partake of liquid refreshments in Mr. Pratt's saloon, and their acceptance of the invitation led *to the alleged battery by Mr. Pratt, who, apparently drew the color line in his treatment of patrons." Mable displayed a lacerated lip and alleged that it was caused by Mr Pratt striking her with a wine glass as he forcibly ejected her and Emma from his refectory. The article ends here ... I have no idea if Pratt was ever charged or prosecuted with assault.

"We want our folks the Negroes, to like us. Over and above the money and the prestige is a love for the race. We feel that in a degree we represent the race and every hair's breadth of achievement we make is to its credit." (George Walker, 1909) He was 1/2 of the famous vaudeville team Williams and Walker ... George Nash Walker, (b.1873 - d.1911) was born in 1873 in Lawrence, Kansas. He left at a young age to follow his dream of becoming a stage performer and toured with a traveling group of minstrels. After performing at shows and fairs across the country, Walker met Bert Williams in 1893 and they formed the duo known as Williams and Walker. During this time, white men performing in minstrel shows blackened their faces to pose as black performers. As a counter, Williams and Walker billed themselves as “Two Real Coons,” a descriptor that marked the two as black men and a reference to the derogatory term “coon” used to describe people of African descent in the United States. While performing as a vaudeville act throughout the United States, George Walker and his partner Bert Williams popularized the cakewalk, an African American dance form named for the prize that would be earned by the winners of a dance contest. There was a distinct difference in presentation styles between the two performers. While the light skinned Bert Williams donned blackface makeup, George Walker was known as a “dandy” who performed without makeup. While Williams played the role of the comic figure, George Walker played the straight man, a dignified counterpoint to the prevailing negative stereotypes of the time. Offstage, Walker was an astute businessman who managed the affairs of the Williams and Walker Company, a venture that brought them fame and wealth nationally and internationally. In 1903, they performed In Dahomey at Buckingham Palace in London and then toured the British Isles. Working in collaboration with Will Marion Cook as playwright, Jesse Shipp as director, and Paul Laurence Dunbar as lyricist, Williams and Walker produced a musical called In Dahomey in 1902. In this play, with its original music, props, and elaborate scenery, Walker played a hustler disguised as a prince from Dahomey who was dispatched by a group of dishonest investors to convince blacks to join a colony. A landmark production, In Dahomey was the first all black show to open on Broadway. Another musical, In Abyssinia opened in 1906 in New York at the Majestic Theater. Both of these productions used African themes and imagery, making them unique for the time. Other Williams and Walker productions include: The Sons of Ham (1900), The Policy Players (1899), and Bandana Land (1908). George Walker married Ada (Aida) Overton, a dancer, choreographer, and comedienne in 1899. Ada (Aida) Overton Walker was known as one of the first professional African American choreographers. After falling ill during the tour of Bandana Land in 1909, George Walker returned to Lawrence, Kansas, the city of his birth where he died on January 8, 1911. He was 38. Sources: Louis Chude-Sokei, The Last “Darky”: Bert Williams, Black-On-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Photographed by Morris of Lawrence Kansas; railsplitter

The Foster Photoplay Company was the first black film company (which was located at 3312 Wabash Avenue), was formed in 1909 and put out two shorts The Pullman Porter (1910), and The Railroad Porter (1912), which are often credited as the first films directed by a black director with an entirely black cast. Synopsis of 'The Railroad Porter' : Its a short comedy about a railroad porter who leaves to go on his run one day. In his absence, his wife invites a waiter from a colored cafe on State Street home for dinner. The porter returns unexpectedly to find another man sitting at his table and eating his food! Mad and insulted, the porter gets his pistol and chases the man out of his house. The waiter goes and gets his gun, comes back, and chases the porter. Fortunately, both are terrible shots and no one gets hurt. [Actors: Lottie Grady (wife), Jerry Mills (porter), and Edgar Litterson (waiter)]. The film's style has often been compared to that of the Keystone Kops comedies of the same period. William D. Foster (circa 1860 - 1940), was the first African American to found a film production company. Writing under the name Juli Jones, Foster began his career as a sports writer for the Chicago Defender, then a local African-American newspaper, that had recently been established in 1905 by Robert Sengstacke Abbott, which quickly became the nations “most influential Black weekly newspaper.” Foster periodically wrote for other newspapers including the Indianapolis Freeman, where he published an article on “the public discourse on the representation of blacks in white-produced films.” Foster was also a press agent for vaudeville stars such as Bert Williams and George Walker and their revues, as well as worked as a booking agent and business manger for Chicago’s Pekin Theater, a well known vaudeville house. He is known to have incorporated various techniques from other films into his productions, as well as successful comedy elements from the black vaudeville stage. He was a multitalented man who intertwined many careers in the course of his life. Moving pictures had barely crept out of the nickelodeon to dance upon the silver screen when Foster grasped the profit potential in this new and exciting medium. At the time, the portrayal of Blacks was nothing less than reprehensible. Even the titles of early films like A Nigger in the Woodpile and the degrading classic The Watermelon Contest demonstrated loathing and disrespect for Blacks, and did not try to hide their racist intent. In 1910, Foster started Foster Photoplay Company in Chicago and set about taking control of the black image into his own hands. He had often booked vaudeville acts for the Robert Mott's Peking Theater Stock Company, and he turned to that pool of talent for his actors. Two years later, The Railroad Porter, was in the can and Foster would produce three more motion pictures in the year that followed. In 1914, to help promote his previous success, Foster toured the South with a retrospective of the four Foster Photoplay short films. The Railroad Porter, The Fall Guy (1913) another comedy, The Butler (1913) a melodrama. As part of the program, Lottie Grady, the company's leading lady, would sing and entertain between reel changes. Despite seeing a positive response to his films, and receiving praise for their positive, realistic depictions of black characters, he failed to experience the same level of success as his primarily white competitors. While white-owned production companies received coverage and advertising placement in trade paper publications, the only coverage Foster received was as the result of calling up the Moving Picture World offices himself. He described his productions in detail to the staff writer, saying, “I don’t want you to take my word for it that these comedies are a big hit. I just want you to come and see one of them and laugh your head off.” A lack of attention from the mainstream trade publications, and an inability to help advance the company further pushed Foster to close the Foster Photoplay Company in 1917. Although he continued to write for a number of publications, he also returned to the world of film, acting as an assistant director in Hollywood in the 1920s. He died in Los Angeles, California in 1940. The history of race films began with Foster and provided an opportunity for African-Americans to depict their own image in the way they wanted. The Foster Photoplay Company paved the way for Lincoln Motion Picture Company (1915) and Ebony Film Corp. By the 1920s, more than thirty film production companies had been set up to produce films about blacks and black life. Sources: 50 Most Influential Black Films: A Celebration of African-American Talent, Determination, and Creativity by S. Torriano Berry with Venise T Berry; chicagonitrate.com; Arts & Critiques Blogspot, by Kristen aka Miss Arts Critic

Barber-Scotia College was founded as Scotia Seminary in January, 1867, by Reverend Luke Dorland who was commissioned by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to establish in the South an institution for the training of newly emancipated Negro women. A survey of situations and of needs resulted in the selection of Concord, North Carolina, as the place for the location of the school. Organization included a program of elementary, secondary, and normal school work. The original purpose of the College was to prepare teachers and social workers to improve the '101 of the freedman and to provide a pool of leaders.' Accordingly, subjects classified as normal, academic, and homemaking were offered in a pattern which anticipated state certification, but which always pointed to the collegiate level. The second period of academic development came in 1916 when the name of the institution was changed to Scotia Women's College. In 1930, Barber Memorial College of Anniston, Alabama, merged with Scotia Women's College. The present name, Barber-Scotia College, was adopted in 1932. Rating and accreditation by this time had become a point of great urgency in education in the South, and four years after the merger of Scotia with Barber, the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools granted Barber-Scotia full approval as a Class 'A' junior college. Eight years later (1942), the Board of National Missions took action to support fully a four-year program for the College; and in 1945, the first class to be granted the Bachelor's degree was graduated. The North Carolina Board of Education granted the College a four-year rating in 1946, which made it possible for graduates who plan to teach to receive the 'A' certificate. On April 2, 1954, the charter was amended to admit students without regard to race or sex. Following closely on this event, the College was admitted to full membership in the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Barber-Scotia College is historically related to the former Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, and currently to the Presbyterian Church (USA), as of June, 1983. The Presbyterian Church (USA) in its Church World Mission Goals, revised by the 202nd General Assembly's June 1990 Statement, stated: 'As a continuing goal, upholding church-related educational institutions, we will seek to form close partnerships with various church related educational institutions, especially with racial ethnic institutions." The Presbyterian Church (USA) and Barber-Scotia College are strengthening the ties in fulfilling the mission to provide a cadre of educated Black Leaders. Info: Barber-Scotia College Image: Historic Cabarrus Assoc. Inc., The Concord Museum

This tintype was among the family memorabilia in the possession of Iris Sloman Bell, of St. Catharines, Ontario. The Sloman - Bell families have relatives who were former slaves from the United States. They escaped to Canada and later settled in the London and St. Catharines areas of Ontario. [ Rick Bell Family, Brock University Archives, Brock University ]

April, 1933 edition of 'Opportunity' with actress Fredi Washington on the cover. University of Minnesota Libraries, Archie Givens, Sr. Collection of African American Literature . The monthly magazine Opportunity gave just that—a chance to make their voices heard—to the talented black writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Created in 1923 by the National Urban League (a group devoted to empowering African Americans economically and socially), Opportunity was edited by scholar Charles S. Johnson. In Johnson's deft hands, Opportunity became a tool for combating racism. During an era when African Americans routinely struggled to land decent jobs, Johnson strove to introduce white audiences to the work of gifted black writers and artists. Expanded social roles and employment opportunities for African Americans, he reasoned, would follow. Another purpose of Opportunity was to promote the programs and policies of the Urban League. In addition to a report of pertinent news, the magazine’s regular departments included “Social Progress,” “Our Negro College,” “Labor,” and the “Survey of the Month,” as well as notes on black accomplishments in the arts and professions. Although Opportunity sought to inform and instruct its readers on the social and economic condition of the race, and only secondarily on political issues, there was a decidedly literary character to the publication. James Weldon Johnson, Helene Johnson, Alain Locke, Langston Hughes, and, for a short time, Claude McKay were but a few of the frequent contributors to the magazine. Countee Cullen and Gwendolyn Bennett each served for a period as literary critic in the 1920s, and in the 1930s Sterling Brown of Howard University wrote the monthly column “The Literary Scene.” To make sure the mainstream publishing world learned that Opportunity was knocking, Charles S. Johnson hosted a lavish dinner at New York City's Civic Club in 1924. With scholar Alain Locke presiding as master of ceremonies, the grand affair mixed prominent publishers and magazine editors with up-and-coming black writers. This momentous event resulted in the publication of Countee Cullen's poems by Harper's magazine, as well as a Survey Graphic magazine dedicated to works by the "New Negro." The Civic Club soirée was just the first of many award ceremonies that Opportunity would host in its ongoing celebration of the spectrum of black talent. The magazine ended its publication in 1949. Source: Drop Me Off in Harlem: Exploring the Intersections; Northwestern University Library