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The Hyers Sisters were important performers of musical theatre in northern California. They lived in Sacramento and started out as musical prodigies. Anna Madah was 12yrs and Emma Louise was 10yrs (although they were billed as ages 10 and 8) at their concert debut in 1867 at the Metropolitan Theatre in Sacramento. Their parents, Samuel B. Hyers and Annie E. Hyers (nee Cryer), had come west from New York. As singers themselves, they had first trained their daughters before sending them for instruction to a German professor, Hugo Frank, and then to the opera singer Josephine D'Ormy. Anna was a soprano; Emma a contralto and gifted comedienne noted for her character songs. They performed for several years in the San Francisco and Oakland areas before embarking on their first transcontinental tour in 1871, under their father's management. For their east coast performances, including an appearance at the Steinway Hall in New York, Samuel Hyers engaged the services of Wallace King, tenor and John Luca, baritone. Mr. A.C. Taylor pianist of San Francisco, traveled with the sisters as accompanist. Early in their repertoire the sisters had included 'dialogues in character' and were said to possess 'great dramatic ability.' It was no surprise, when on March 26, 1876 at the Academy of Music in Lynn, Massachusetts, they presented a musical drama entitled, 'Out of the Wilderness,' which had been written for them by Joseph Bradford of Boston. For this show the quartet of singers was joined by Sam Lucas, a sometime minstrel actor slated to become a veteran comedian of the African American stage. Billed as the Hyers Sisters Combination, the troupe toured their show to New England towns, playing mostly one-night stands. In June the play's title was changed to 'Out of Bondage.' It was a simple tale of a slave family before and the Civil War. Four younger slaves go North as older folk hold back when Union troops arrive to liberate the South. In the end the family is reunited as the elders, who had stayed behind, visit their children, who have become professional vocalists. In 1883 the sisters decided to leave their father's management. Their parents had long been estranged, mother Annie Hyers having moved away from the family home in Sacramento, first to San Francisco then to Stockton. The breach with their father came in 1881 when he admitted into the company a young woman, 'little more than a teenager,' named Mary C Reynolds, whom he married two years later. He was then 53. Reynolds, billed as Mrs. May Hyers, was also a contralto and competed with Emma Louise (her stepdaughter) for roles. As the situation became untenable and likely to generate controversy, the sisters felt it incumbent on them to leave. At ages 17 and 19, they chose to be on their own. The sisters found new engagements for their combination of vocalists, at times in league with other managements, at other times contributing special items in companies of so called minstrels. Both sisters entered first marriages in 1883: Anna Madah to cornet player Henderson Smith and Emma Louise to bandleader George Freeman. The latter wedding took place in full view of the audience on the stage of the Baldwin Theatre in San Francisco during a performance of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Callender's Minstrels. By the start of the 1890s the sisters had been performing professionally for more than twenty years and had won recognition and respect for their talents and skills. Sources: A History of African American Theatre' by Errol G Hill and James V Hatch; Bradley Rulopov, Photographer; Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection

Madame E. Azalia Hackley was an African American classical singer, social worker, writer, philanthropist, and activist who championed the use of African-American spirituals among the African-American people as a tool for social change. Her efforts laid the groundwork for the use of spirituals as freedom songs during the Civil Rights Movement. This work used newspaper accounts and archive studies documenting Madame Hackley’s tours cross-country and abroad to raise funds for African-American classical musicians. It show Hackley’s intense devotion to her African-American roots, as she easily could have passed for white. Nevertheless, she traveled throughout the South in ‘Jim Crow’ railway cars by choice. This work also recovers several of her influential published works, including A Guide to Voice Culture (1909); The Colored Girl Beautiful (1916), an etiquette book for African-American women desiring professional jobs; and “Hints to Young Colored Artists”, a series of articles designed to help young African-American classical musicians succeed. Born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, Emma Hackley was the eldest of two daughters of a blacksmith and a schoolteacher. Her mother Corilla Beard Smith , the daughter of a freed slave who established a successful laundry business in Detroit, had founded a school in Murfreesboro for former slaves and their children, but was forced by the hostile white community around her to close the facility in 1870. The family relocated to Detroit, where Hackley became the first black student at the Miami Avenue Public School. Precocious both academically and musically, she took piano, violin, and voice lessons as a child, and later helped with the family income by singing and playing the piano at high school dances. After graduating from high school with honors, Hackley worked her way through Washington Normal School by giving piano lessons. She then taught grade school for eight years, while she continued with her music studies and sang with the Detroit Musical Society, the finest choral group in the city. In 1894, against her mother's wishes, Emma eloped with attorney Edwin Henry Hackley and moved with him to Denver. While earning a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Denver, she served as choir director at her church and as the assistant director of a large Denver choir. She also devoted time to various black organizations, including a local branch of the Colored Women's League which she founded and publicized through the woman's page of her husband's struggling newspaper, the Denver Statesman. With her husband, she helped organize the Imperial Order of Libyans, a fraternal group whose mission was to combat racial prejudice and promote equality. In 1901, with her marriage faltering, Hackley left her husband and moved to Philadelphia, where she became the music director of the Episcopal Church of the Crucifixion, a black congregation. (The couple permanently separated in 1909.) Earning a reputation as a skilled choral director, in 1904 Hackley organized the 100-member People's Chorus (later known as the Hackley Choral). The chorus not only contributed to community spirit but helped launch the careers of a number of talented black performers, including contralto Marian Anderson and tenor Roland Hayes. Hackley also helped organize a series of highly acclaimed recitals featuring herself and talented members of the chorus, the proceeds from which enabled her to study for a year in Paris with Jean de Reszke, a well-known opera singer and vocal coach. In 1907, upon her return to the United States, Hackley began to look beyond her own career and to focus more on the advancement of black music and musicians. Keenly aware of the barriers facing them (she herself had scorned concert managers who asked her to "pass" as white), Hackley raised money through concerts and private solicitations to establish a fund to aid African-American musicians who wanted to study abroad. Around 1910, she began a series of lecture tours designed to further advance black music and to raise self-esteem among her people. She published a selection of her lectures in a book called The Colored Girl Beautiful (1916). Later lectures focused on traditional Negro folk music, a form she hoped to keep alive even though many young black musicians were moving to newer musical styles. Although stricken in 1916 by a recurring ear ailment which impaired her hearing and caused episodes of dizziness, Hackley produced a series of community folk concerts in black churches and schools across the United States. In the fall of 1920, she introduced black folk music at an international Sunday school convention in Tokyo, after which she embarked on a California tour. When a San Diego concert date fell through, however, Hackley, who was said to be high strung, suffered an emotional collapse and was forced to return to Detroit. She died there in 1922, of a cerebral hemorrhage. In recognition of Hackley's contributions to the cause of racial equality, the E. Azalia Hackley Memorial Collection of Negro Music, Dance, and Drama was established in the Detroit Public Library in 1943. Sources: Photograph dated August 2, 1897. Taken by Jones & Lehman in Denver, Co. [Detroit Public Library/Digital Collections], Encyclopedia.Com

Belle Davis was an African American song and dance artist, entertainer, choreographer, and director. She was a recording pioneer who toured Europe extensively during the period 1901-1929. Not only did she record on disc as early as 1902, she also performed in front of a movie camera at least twice during the early years of the 20th century. In spite of these extraordinary achievements, little has been written about her; her biography, her discography and her filmography remain sketchy. Belle Davis, (1874 - circa 1938), was born in Chicago, Illinois on April 28, 1874, the daughter of George Davis. Of European and African ancestry, she spent most of her adult life abroad, largely in Britain, where she arrived in mid-1901 with two boys who were billed as Piccaninny Actors. Her performance style changed from ‘coon shouting’ and ‘ragtime singing’ in the 1890s to a more decorous manner, where prancing children provided the amusement. She directed their stage act, and with two, sometimes three or four, black children the act was a vigorous and popular entertainment in British and continental theatres. Davis's troupe appeared on the reputable Empire Theatre circuit in late 1901, recorded in London in 1902 (including the song ‘The Honey-Suckle and the Bee’), continued touring London and the provinces in 1903, and ventured to the continent. Dozens of other African-Americans were entertaining the British at this time, and on June 9, 1904 Davis married one of the more successful, Henry Troy, in London. Following her marriage the act continued to tour, and was filmed, for commercial distribution. The Empire circuit continued to employ the group, as did other leading theatres. They presented their ten-minute stage act in Dublin, Cardiff, Swansea, Manchester, Birmingham, Nottingham, Leicester, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and Sheffield between May 1906 and August 1909, and appeared in Berlin, The Hague, Paris, Vienna, St Petersburg, and Brussels during the same period. Some leading performers had their apprenticeship as dancers in Davis's act; when they grew too large she recruited younger boys from America. The act had been seen by hundreds of thousands of Britons by 1914, when war prevented continental touring and so exposed more Britons to Belle Davis and Her Cracker Jacks. She and the children performed in major cities as well as Ayr, Doncaster, Portsmouth, Ilkeston, and Weymouth during the war years. Her last known performance in Britain was in 1918. From 1925 to 1929 she directed the dancing in the revues at the Casino de Paris, and 1929 also saw Belle Davis Piccaninnies in Germany with Wunderland der Liebe, a revue set in the south seas. As early as 1915 she was describing herself as married to the African American entertainer Edward Peter (Eddie) Whaley (circa 1880–1960), and she took out an American passport in the name Belle Whaley in 1920. She and Whaley eventually did marry, on July 12, 1926, but they had divorced by 1936. In 1938 she boarded the Queen Mary in Southampton to return to a Chicago address. Sometimes billed as a ‘creole’, Davis was a soprano whose songs were not from the minstrel show or spiritual traditions, but were graceful melodies. By contrast the children were energetic dancers who combined suppleness with comedy. Their well-dressed director's elegance was praised, and is evidenced by surviving promotional material. The mercurial entertainment business had few acts for whom top theatres provided employment for the length of time she worked in Britain. Her qualities both as a singer and as dance director, combined with her professionalism in travelling from town to town, country to country, in charge of boisterous children, were solid, and enabled her to have success at her chosen profession for three decades. Stately, well dressed, and showing faint African features, she presented American dance and song to countless Britons and kept top employers anxious to take her act for their shows. Sources: Leslie's Weekly Newspaper (July 22, 1897); Rainer E. Lotz

Edith Spencer was an international singer and dancer who appeared in vaudeville, the theatre and in nightclubs during the 1920s and 1930s. She appeared in the Broadway productions of "Runnin' Wild," "Rarin' to Go," and succeeded the great Florence Mills in "Shuffle Along." Her performances included club engagements and appearances from New York to Los Angeles, London, Paris, and the Far East. After "Shuffle Along" closed, Lottie Gee and Spencer became partners and formed a sister act that was followed by the addition of Allegretti Anderson. The trio was alternately billed as the Harmony Trio, the Creole Beauties, and the Three Dark Sisters. The Edith Spencer Scrapbook documents Spencer's entertainment career and her subsequent employment as a real estate agent. The contents include newspaper clippings, flyers and a photograph of Spencer, Gee and Anderson. Before she obtained recognition on Broadway, Spencer had accompanied T. Lloyd Hickman and her brother, C. Spencer Tocus, in a concert recital in 1916. In 1940 Spencer married Cecil P. Brooks and they were divorced in 1946. Sometime after her divorce Spencer relocated to Los Angeles, California from the Philippines where she had resided with her husband, and subsequently became a real estate agent. Sources: Studio portrait of entertainer Edith Spencer circa 1920s. Adolph R. Sussman, photographer The New York Public Library/Archives & Manuscripts.

A veteran of vaudeville and musical theater, born in 1885, Lillyn Brown’s show business career began in 1894 when she left her home in Georgia with a traveling minstrel show. Born Lillian Thomas to an African American mother and American Indian father, Brown initially performed as the “Indian Princess” but soon acquired the role of male impersonator (or “interlocutor”) billed as “Elbrown” or “E. L. Brown,” developing an act in which she wore top hat and tails, sang several songs as a man, then revealed her long hair and continued singing as a woman. She made her only known gramophone recordings in 1921, backed by her group, the Jazzbo Syncopators. Brown toured Europe, appeared on Broadway, and performed at the major clubs in Harlem and on the Keith Circuit until her retirement in 1934. She resumed her stage career in 1949, with a dramatic role in Regina. In the 1950s, she operated an acting and singing school in Manhattan, taught for many years at the Jarahal School of Music in Harlem (Sugar Ray Robinson was one of her pupils), and was active in the Negro Actors Guild. Her final public performance took place in 1964 at a tribute concert for her contemporary Mamie Smith. After a long and productive life in show business, Lillyn Brown passed away in 1969. Earl Broady, Photographer The Daniel Cowin Collection of African American Vernacular Photography Bio: 'Fans in a Flashbulb' International Center of Photography

As she appeared in a scene from Oscar Micheaux's film Homesteader. It was the first full length feature directed by a black film director. This was also the film debut of Ms. Preer. Unfortunately the film has been lost .. hopefully it will be discovered in someones attic in pristine condition. Synopsis: The story of a Black pioneer's life as a South Dakota rancher. Out of loneliness, he marries the daughter of a vain Black clergyman, forsaking his true love, a Scottish woman, to avoid social stigma and trouble with the law. The marriage sours owing to interference by his hostile father-in-law. The rancher's wife goes insane and kills her father and herself. The authorities arrest the pioneer for both murders, but his first love hires detectives who prove his innocence. There is also a happy ending when it is revealed that the Scottish woman is in fact a light complected black woman thus clearing the way for them to be together. Image: Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture / Photographs and Prints Division

Photographed at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester in 1876 (Collection Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University) Miss LaLa was born Anna Olga Albertina Brown to Wilhelm Brown and Marie Christine Borchardt, on April 21, 1858, in the former German (but now Polish) city of Stettin (Szczecin). Although petite in stature, the delicate Miss LaLa possessed astonishing strength. Born April of 1858 in what is now Poland, she performed in circuses and music halls across Europe. Her graceful aesthetic was more akin to Cirque du Soleil than Ringling Brothers. Her versatile repertoire included wire walking, trapeze acrobatics, strength balancing and iron jaw routines. Miss LaLa started her career at the age of nine or ten. At twenty-one, she soared to fame when Edgar Degas immortalized her in his painting Miss La La At the Cirque Fernando. In it he captured her rising nearly 70 feet above her audience, supported only by a rope clenched between her teeth. Miss LaLa was known by many names. Capturing her exotic mixed racial traits, she became Olga the Negress, Venus of the Tropics, African Princess, and Olga the Mulatto. She performed from the late 1860s until 1888. Early on she was a star attraction of the traveling Troupe Kaira, along with Theophila Szterker a.k.a. Kaira la Blanche (1864-88). These astonishing performers often partnered in their acts. Together they were The Two Butterflies – Les Deux Papillions. Miss LaLa also earned the name of The Cannon Woman or La Mulatresse-Canon while holding a 150-pound civil war cannon in her teeth. The cannon was then fired, sending her body twisting and turning in mid-air. Miss LaLa quit performing in 1888, the same year her partner plummeted to her death. The ladies of steel floated through the air. Night after night, they concealed fear, exertion and physical discomfort. These ethereal butterflies paid a very high price for admiration. The same year her partner died, she quit performing and married Emanuel Woodson, an American contortionist. Together they had three children. He later managed the Palais d’être circus in Brussels. She became Anna Woodson a.k.a. Olga Woodson. The last known date of her life came from a U.S. passport application filed in 1919. Thanks to Edgar Degas, she lives forever, floating in the great arched dome of the Cirque Ferando. blackhistorybuff.com (March 2019); blackhistorybuffpodcast; racingnelliebly.com, Famed Aerialist Miss LaLa Mesmerized Fans Including Edgar Degas with Her Graceful Strength Edgar Degas' etchings and painting Miss Lala at the Fernando Circus, 1879 : static01.nyt.com/images/2013/02/22/arts/22DEGAS1_SPAN/DEG...

Aida Overton Walker (1880-1914), dazzled early 20th century theater audiences with her original dance routines, her enchanting singing voice, and her penchant for elegant costumes. One of the premiere African American women artists of the turn of the century, she popularized the cakewalk and introduced it to English society. In addition to her attractive stage persona and highly acclaimed performances, she won the hearts of black entertainers for numerous benefit performances near the end of her tragically short career and for her cultivation of younger women performers. She was, in the words of the New York Age's Lester Walton, the exponent of "clean, refined artistic entertainment." Born in New York City, where she gained an education and considerable musical training. At the tender age of fifteen, she joined John Isham's Octoroons, one of the most influential black touring groups of the 1890s, and the following year she became a member of the Black Patti Troubadours. Although the show consisted of dozens of performers, Overton emerged as one of the most promising soubrettes of her day. In 1898, she joined the company of the famous comedy team Bert Williams and George Walker, and appeared in all of their shows—The Policy Players (1899), The Sons of Ham (1900), In Dahomey (1902), Abyssinia (1905), and Bandanna Land (1907). Within about a year of their meeting, George Walker and Overton married and before long became one of the most admired and elegant African American couples on stage. While George Walker supplied most of the ideas for the musical comedies and Bert Williams enjoyed fame as the "funniest man in America," Aida quickly became an indispensable member of the Williams and Walker Company. In The Sons of Ham, for example, her rendition of Hannah from Savannah won praise for combining superb vocal control with acting skill that together presented a positive, strong image of black womanhood. Indeed, onstage Aida refused to comply with the plantation image of black women as plump mammies, happy to serve; like her husband, she viewed the representation of refined African American types on the stage as important political work. A talented dancer, Aida improvised original routines that her husband eagerly introduced in the shows; when In Dahomey was moved to England, Aida proved to be one of the strongest attractions. Society women invited her to their homes for private lessons in the exotic cakewalk that the Walkers had included in the show. After two seasons in England, the company returned to the United States in 1904, and it was Aida who was featured in a New York Herald interview about their tour. At times Walker asked his wife to interpret dances made famous by other performers—one example being the "Salome" dance that took Broadway by storm in the early 1900s—which she did with uneven success. After a decade of nearly continuous success with the Williams and Walker Company, Aida's career took an unexpected turn when her husband collapsed on tour with Bandanna Land. Initially Walker returned to his boyhood home of Lawrence, Kansas, where his mother took care of him. In his absence, Aida took over many of his songs and dances to keep the company together. In early 1909, however, Bandanna Land was forced to close, and Aida temporarily retired from stage work to care for her husband, now clearly seriously ill. No doubt recognizing that he likely would not recover and that she alone could support the family, she returned to the stage in Bob Cole and J. Rosamond Johnson's Red Moon in autumn 1909, and she joined the Smart Set Company in 1910. Aida also began touring the vaudeville circuit as a solo act. Less than two weeks after Walker's death in January 1911, Aida signed a two-year contract to appear as a co-star with S. H. Dudley in another all-black traveling show. Although still a relatively young woman in the early 1910s, Aida began to develop medical problems that limited her capacity for constant touring and stage performance. As early as 1908, she had begun organizing benefits to aid such institutions as the Industrial Home for Colored Working Girls, and after her contract with S. H. Dudley expired, she devoted more of her energy to such projects, which allowed her to remain in New York. She also took an interest in developing the talents of younger women in the profession, hoping to pass along her vision of black performance as refined and elegant. She produced shows for two such female groups in 1913 and 1914—the Porto Rico Girls and the Happy Girls. She encouraged them to work up original dance numbers and insisted that they don stylish costumes on stage. When Aida Overton Walker died suddenly of kidney failure on October 11, 1914, the African American entertainment community in New York went into deep mourning. The New York Age featured a lengthy obituary on its front page, and hundreds of shocked entertainers descended on her residence to confirm a story they hoped was untrue. Walker left behind a legacy of polished performance and model professionalism. Her demand for respect and her generosity made her a beloved figure in African American theater circles. Source: Jazz: Black Musical Theater in New York, 1890-1915. Washington, D.C., Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989, Thomas L Riis

Here she is at home in one of her favorite outfits. An Intimate Portrait of Hollywood's First Black Film Star: Dorothy Dandridge; by Earl Mills

Anna Madah Hyers and Emma Louise Hyers were pioneers of black musical theater who toured the United States from the late 1860s through the turn of the century. They possessed remarkable voices and over their long careers collaborated with notable African American artists like Billy Kersands, Pauline Hopkins, and Sam Lucas on a string of successful productions. Source: Harvard Theatre Collection

George W Lowther was an enslaved valet, When he was emancipated in the mid 1840s he moved to Boston, Massachusetts where he established a hairdressing business. Active in the abolitionist movement, he was elected in 1878 to the Massachusetts legislature. George W. Lowther, barber, abolitionist, equal school rights activist, and Massachusetts legislator, was enslaved in Edenton, North Carolina. His mother was Polly Lowther (circa 1780 - 1864), his father’s identity is unknown. His mother was an Edenton baker, enslaved to a wealthy planter named Joseph Blount Skinner until she was emancipated around 1824. Lowther’s siblings were Anthony Lowther, Fanny Skinner, Annie Skinner, Jenny, Eliza Poppleston, and Thomas Barnswell. Remembered in Skinner’s 1850 Will as “my favourite and faithful Body Servant whom I have freed,” George Lowther received a private education from Skinner. Early in 1845, encouraged by his hometown friend, John S. Jacobs, Lowther left Skinner and went to New York. But in the late summer of 1847, he reunited with Skinner, serving as his former owner’s valet on a trip from New York to Boston. By 1850, George Lowther had established his hairdressing business in Boston and was living in the household of abolitionist William H. Logan, his future father-in-law. Lowther married his first wife, Sarah Logan in September 1852. Among the wedding guests were William Cooper Nell, Harriet Jacobs, and her daughter, Louisa, who was the bridesmaid. In December 1855, Lowther, along with Robert Morris, Lewis Hayden and other prominent abolitionists, presided at a meeting of colored citizens of Boston to recognize Nell for his efforts to promote equal school rights. By 1860, Lowther and his family moved to Milford, Massachusetts. While there he wrote a testimonial for slave narrative author and fellow North Carolinian Harriet Jacobs, which was published in her Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl which appeared in 1861. George and Sarah Lowther had three children: George W. Jr. (1855-1909), Anna J. (1854-1917) and Sarah Viola (1863-1954). After his second wife Roseanna died, Lowther married Jane Piper of New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1873; his stepdaughter, Lizzie Piper (Ensley) (1847-1919), a teacher and founder of a Boston library, later became an influential suffragist in Colorado. Lowther was the first African American in Massachusetts to be admitted to the national temperance organization, the Right Worthy Grand Lodge. Along with lawyer George L. Ruffin (his next door neighbor in 1870) and Dr. John S. Rock, Lowther supported the Republican Party, and in 1878 he was elected to a two-year term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives where he represented Boston’s 9th Ward. In 1879, Lowther served with early equal rights activist Wendell Phillips and three others on a fundraising committee to aid African Americans who wanted to leave the South. When Wendell Phillips died in 1884, George W. Lowther was one of the speakers at Phillips’ memorial service. Lowther worked as Deputy Sealer of Weights and Measures at the Boston Court House (1882) and Constable and Messenger in the Treasurer’s Office (1889-1898). George Lowther died of tuberculosis on October 5, 1898, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was 76. Source: BlackPast article by Mary Maillard (Aug. 2013)

Was Samuel Marlowe, the inspiration for author Raymond Chandler's famed fictional character Philip Marlowe, who's been played in film adaptations, by several actors over the decades, from Humphrey Bogart to Robert Mitchum? Marlowe, is alleged to be LA's first licensed black private detective. He shadowed lives, took care of secrets, and knew his way around Tinseltown. He helped Hollywood figures out of jams in the off-limits African-American clubs and bars in LA that many white actors and execs enjoyed frequenting on the sly. Marlowe was supposedly called on to help stars like Clark Gable and Charlie Chaplin track down runaway lovers, and was tapped to keep an eye on a $8,000 blackmail payment Marlene Deitrich's studio made to the son of her female makeup artist she was in a relationship with. It's said he also knew hard-boiled writers Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. Marlowe first connected with Dashiell Hammett in 1929, the same year Hammett published his first novel 'Red Harvest'. Marlowe wrote a letter to Hammett to complain about details of his portrayals of private investigators and the two supposedly became friends; with Marlowe eventually sharing real-life details that would show up in Hammett's later books. According to research and an LA Times article, in 1930 when Hammett published 'The Maltese Falcon', the "Sam Spade" character was a private nod to Marlowe's help. And the character’s surname was Hammett’s “winking inside joke,” because “spade” was a derogatory term for a black person. Marlowe also helped out Raymond Chandler too by not only sharing his real-life expertise and tracking down police files, but also escorting the writer around the seedier parts of LA where it was difficult for whites to navigate because of the strict segregation at the time. So his name was Samuel Marlowe … and the writers most famous characters were Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe. Samuel Benjamin Marlowe, Sr., was born on August 3, 1890, in Montego Bay, Jamaica. According to The Times obituary, he served in Britain’s Egyptian Expeditionary Force, a World War I fighting brigade that guarded the Suez Canal. After the war, Marlowe immigrated to the United States settling in Los Angeles, where he soon became a private detective. According to a 1980s story in the Sentinel it asserted: When Marlowe became a PI in 1921, he was the “first black man to have a licensed detective agency (Samuel B. Marlowe Detective Agency) in the state of California.” The California Department of Consumer Affairs, which issues private detective licenses, has no record of Marlowe, but an agency spokesman said that older files are often incomplete or missing. The University of Southern California's History Department researcher Angelica Stoddard, whose work centers on L.A.’s first licensed black private eyes, says Marlowe is the earliest one she’s heard of. The private eye died two weeks before his 101st birthday in 1991. He’s buried at the Inglewood Park Cemetery. Sources: LA Times: Finding Marlowe article written by Daniel Miller (Nov. 2014); Shadow and Act (April 2017); theculturegeistblogspot (Dec. 2014)

World renowned performer, WWII spy, and activist are few of the titles used to describe Josephine Baker. One of the most successful African American performers in French history, Baker’s career illustrates the ways entertainers can use their platforms to change the world. National Women's History Museum, by Arlisha R. Norwood, NWHM Fellow ( 2017); Photographer, Arthur O'Neill (Paris)

A circa 1927 french advert featured in La Vie Parisienne magazine featuring the one and only Josephine Baker endorsing Garnier hair care products. Translation: I owe the health of my hair to Garnier Lotion. [Worthpoint]

Here she is with a stuffed friend. Keystone-France, Photographer

A simple dress looks anything but on Ms. Baker, photographed by Walery of Paris.

French postcard of the great Josephine Baker. Photographed by GL Manuel.

Photographed in 1925 by Freiherr Wolff von Gudenberg.