"Gelve Grice" {January 16,1922-August 17,2004}

He was born in Tamo (Jefferson County).a small farming town located fifteen miles from Pine Bluff.At the age of thirteen,Gelve moved with his parents,Toy & Lillie,to Little Rock (Pulaski County),where he graduated from Dunbar High School in 1942.An accomplished sportsman,Gelve made the all-state football team his senior year of high school and later played for a service team during his four-year stint in the Navy.Gelve entered the U.S. Navy immediately after graduation in the heat of World War II,eventually serving in the Pacific,where he guarded Japanese prisoners.


Gelve began his photography career as a high school senior.L.C. & Daisy Bates,publishers of the Arkansas State Press newspaper,encouraged his journalistic interests by creating a gossip column that featured his images and writings about fellow Dunbar classmates.While in the Navy,he was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Air Station in Illinois and went to Chicago on leave,where he took amateur photos of the city's nightlife,capturing unique images of famous African Americans like Joe Louis,Louis Armstrong,and famed guitarist T-Bone Walker.


After completing his military service on April 23,1946,Gelve enrolled at Arkansas Agricultural,Mechanical,and normal College (AM & College),later the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB),and majored in psychology.He also played football for the Golden Lions,served as yearbook photographer,and was eventually hired in 1947 as the campus photographer.In September 1949,Gelve married his college sweetheart,Jean Bell of North Little Rock (Pulaski County),a singer who went on to become the first African American graduate student in the music department of the University of Arkansas (UA) In Fayetteville (Washington County).They had one son,Michael.


When he graduated in 1950,Gelve had already opened the professional photography studio where he would earn his living for rhe next forty years.He frequently worked outside the studio for the Arkansas State Press and KARK and KTHV television stations.He often ran the sidelines,snapping photos of UABP Golden Lions football games.His photos also appeared in such national publications as Ebony,jet,and Life magazines.


One of the highlights of Gelve's career came while still a college student in 1948,when he was asked to document the integration of the University of Arkansas Law School in Fayetteville.Silas Hunt,accompanied by attroneys Wiley Branton and Harold Flowers,became the first African-American students to enroll at an all-white Southern university since Reconstruction.Gelve was commissioned to document this historic moment on film.There are no other photographs of this event.In 1958,Gelve photographed Martin Luther King Jr's commencement address at AM& N College.Because Gelve was often called upon to chronicle significant happening in the African American community,his collection includes images of other notable African Americans,such as Mary McLeod Bethune,Ray Charles,Thurgood Marshall,and Muhammed Ali.