"Robert H.Mcneill" (December 19,1917-mAY 27,2005)

Photographer,was born in Washington,D.C.,into a middle-class family.His daddy was a physician,and his mama was an educator.In the 1930s he attended Dunbar High School, where his classmates included future photographers Harrison Allen and brothers Bobby and George Scurlock, sons of prominent African American photographer Addison Scurlock. Harrison recalled that on several occasions the boys walked from school to Scurlock's photography studio at Ninth and U Streets to watch him work.this sparked their interest in pursuing photography, first as a hobby, then as a career. The scurlocks later took over daddy's studio,and Harrison became a photographer for the Department of Labor.Robert entered Howard University as a pre-med student he kept his skills by photographing events,particularly celebrity vistors to the university.When Olympic track star Jesse Owens made campus visit,Robert snapped a picture of him standing with university president Mordecai Johnson,surrounded by hundereds of students. Robert sold the photograph to fourteen African American newspapers on the East Coast. Through this experience,he saw the importance of photography to the African American press: Images of the lives and accomplishments of African Americans were central to the newspapers' uplift mission and by producing them,African American photographs could earn a study living. In 1936 Robert went to New York and enrolled in the New York Institute of Photography.During the 1930s, photography-driven magazines had become increasing important and popular. Like mainstrain publications Life and Look, African American publications of this type employed many photographers to illustrate their reports on African American communities around the country.Dutton Furguson,editor of Flash! magazine, asked Robert,still a student, to photograph the Bronx Slave Market,an open-air space Walton Avenue where women gathered and pontential employers often hired them for day labor.Dutton gave Robert a three-page spread to document a day in the lifes of these women. Flash! published thirteen of  Robert's photographs of not only women waiting for work opportunities but also employed women work-scrubbing floors and cooking meals for the meager wages 20-30 cents and hour.Subsequently,Robert became a regular feature photographer for Flash! and for Washington, D.C., office of Otto McClarrin's NewsPic magazine.In 1040 Robert was inivited to participated in a Federal Writers' Project study under guidance of Writer Sterling Brown. Led by Roscoe Lewis,Robert and other members of the all-African American staff traveled to Virginia.Robert role was to photograph African American life,work, and leisure in the aftermath of the Great Depression.Despite the initial relutctance of many subjects  to be photographed,they were ultimately casual and relaxed in front of Robert's camera. The result was a body of work that illustrated Robert's growing mastery of photography and his skills in the darkroom. One photography,entitled Spring Planting,portrays a farmer riding on his plow,and by using the darkroom technique of burning the corners of the print on each side of the farmer's head, he drew the viewer's eye to the man's countenance.Although other photos may have adequately documented farm laborers, Spring Planting compelled its audience to recognize the farmer's humanity.At the completion of the Negro in Virginia project, Robert returned home and launched the McNeill News Service.He ran his studio in the back of the first floor of his family's home in Washington, D.C.'s prominent home while his daddy used the front entrance for his medical practice.The basement served as his darkroom. His former classmate Harrison became his technician.He and Harrison operated the business together until World War II,when both were called to service in 1942 within days of each other.When they returned, Harrison took a job with the Library of Congress,and Robert returned to photography.He and fellow photographer Larry Grymes started Gem Photography in a studio located at Thirteenth and U Streets and continued to supply African American press with candid photographs of businesses, social functions, and local national celebrities.The business was slow, and in 1950 Robert closed down his studio and accepted work as a government photographer, first for the Naval Gun Factory and later the Pentagon,the State department in 1956, where he remained as chief of the photography branch until his retirement in 1978.When he was not photographing heads of state,Robert gave back to the photographic community.He remained active as a member of the Fotocraft Camera Club, which had been organized around 1938. FotoCraft was an offshoot of the photography program offered by the Twelfth Street YMCA,the first Y founded for African Americans.As a professional photographer,he frequently returned to conduct FotoCraft workshops on photography and darkroom work for aspiring photographers and hobbyists.He also juired some of the members shows.Held in esteen by his peers,Robert saw his work exhibited in local, national,and international venues. His studio was one of four photo studios featured in Visual journal: Harlem and D.C. in the Thirties and forties, developed by the Smithsonian's Center for African American History and Culture in 1996.The exhibit and publication of the same title featured the work of Gordon Parks and Morgan & and Marvin Smith in New York and the Scurlock studio and Robert in Washington, D.C. in 1998 the Exposure Group African American photographers Association honored him with their Maurice Sorrell Lifetime Achievement Award. 

"Augustus-Washington" {September 21 1820-June 7,1875}

He was an African American abolitionist and photographer specializing as Daguerretotypist.

From Trenton,New Jersey he was the son of a former slave and a woman of South Asian decent.His mama died when he was a young a step mama,also a former slave raised him.Augustus struggled to obtain schooling,first in Trenton and later at Oneida Institute in Whitesboro,
New York,Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire,and Dartmouth College.In 1843,he moved to Hartford and opened a daguerrean studio to help finance his education.Finishing school in 1847,he returned to Hartford;opens a a studio for a short period of time.During this time many of his portraits were of political and social figures of the era and reflect his sentiment about slavery.

In 1851 he expressed pessimism about prospects of African Americans in American society in a letter to New York Tribune.In 1853 he immigrated to Liberia to work as a schoolteacher,farmer stone operator
and Dagurretotypist.One year later,Augustus he expressed enthusiasm about his adopted land in a letter,stating that,I believe that I shall do a thousand times more good for Africa." The last reference to Augustus work as a Daguerretypist dates from 1858.

He never regretted his decision to immigrate to Liberia,and when he died in Monrovia.His death was mourned as a "severe loss to Western Africa."

"Paul-Samuel-Henderson" (October 10,1899-May 24,1988)

Was an African American photojournalists for the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper from

1929-1960.He became well known for taking pictures of large groups and distant objects atop a ladder he carried.Paul primarily photographed people,including church groups,politicians,graduations,local college and university groups,weddings,events during the African-American Civil Rights Movement,and more.He was a member of the NAACP,a vestryman at St.James Church,charter member of the Druid Hill Avenue Neighborhood Club, assistant treasurer of a local Frontiers International Club,and supported the The Salvation Army.

Paul was born in Springfield,Tennessee and was the youngest of four children to Ike A.& Annie L.Henderson.At age 18 he registered for the World War I draft on September 12,1918 while working as a bricklayer for a steel company in Gary,Indiana.In 1920 his profession changed to driver  for a laundry in Gary.At some point during his residence in Gary,he attended the School for Professional Photography.

After leaving Indiana,Paul worked for a newspaper in Roanoke,Virginia.He moved to Baltimore in 1929 and became what the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper called their first photographer.Paul used a large format  view camera to produce glass negatives,and eight by ten inch and four by five inch acetate negatives.

Paul documented racial segregation and early civil rights protests as community members of the Baltimore City's African-American population.Paul photographed  NAACP Baltimore Branch president  Lillie Carroll Jackson,Baltimore City Mayor and Maryland State Govenor Theodore Mckeldin,Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall  when he was a lawyer for the NAACP,journalist and publisher Carl Murphy,businesses and people along Pennsylvania Avenue,which was a main artery for African American culture and life in Baltimore and much more.

Paul bequeathed his photograph and object collection to the Peale Museum.When the Peale closed its doors in 1997,the collection was transferred to the Maryland Historical Society.

In 1930,he married schoolteacher and "prominent society girl"Elizabeth Johnson.Elizabeth was a graduate of Douglass High School and Coppin Normal for Teachers (now Coppin State University) in Baltimore whose career flourished in the Baltimore City Public School system.Paul & Elizabeth had no children.

In 1966 Paul became so gravely ill that on January 22,the Baltimore Afro-American printed a premature obituary for him.In the same issue,the newspaper ask readers for prayers for Paul who had been in Hopkins Hospital for the past week.In April 1966,the newspaper's Bettye M.Moss updates readers in her column about Paul's condition,stating that he is able to be "up and about"at the Bolton Hill Nursing Home at Lafayette Avenue and John Street in Baltimore.By June the Afro-American reports that John is back at at 1925 Druid Hill Avenue in Baltimore.

Paul died at Union Memorial Hospital after a reported with long term illness.Services were held at St.James Episcopal Church at Lafayette and Arlington avenues.He had outlived his wife Elizabeth,who passed away in 1982.His obituary stated that he was survived by his brother,Willard Henderson,who lived in Tampa,Florida.

"Elise-Forrest-Harleston" (February 4,1891-1970)

Was the first female African American Photographer in South Carolina.She operated a photography studio at 118 Calhoun Street in Charleston with her genre painter husband Edwin Harleston from 1922-1932.At the insistence of her then fiancé Edwin Harleston,Elise left her home in South Carolina and traveled to New York to enroll in the E.Brunel School of Photography in 1919.She was the only female of color attending the  school and learned many photographic techniques from her German teachers;after graduation Elise continued her studies at Tuskegee University in Alabama,she worked under  C.M.Batty.Under his tutelarge,Elise became a part of the artistic community that challenged racist stereotypes of African Americans and her works reflected the image of  "the New Negro."Elise had married Edwin in 1920 and remained a devoted wife to her artists husband often taking the photographs of the subjects he intended to paint.While his paintings went on to garner critical acclaim,the contributions of his wife were rarely mentioned.


After kissing the lips of his deathly ill daddy,Edwin died of pheumonia in 1931.Elise close up her studio and remarried a school teacher,John J.Wheeler,within the year.She moved to Baltimore,Chicago and then Southern California,where she remained until her death.According to her great-niece Mae Whitlock Gentry,Elise never spoke of her relationship with Edwin or her work as a photographer.After her death of a brain aneurysm in 1970,her family found Edwin's letters and a cache of almost two dozen glass plate negatives that she had saved.

"Raphael-Elize" [1911-February 9,1945]

Was an early 20th century French politician and the first black mayor of a metropolitan town in France: Sable-surSarthe (Sarthe).He was born in Martinigue into a racially mixed family: Augustin,his daddy,his a tax collector and active Freemason,and his mama,Jeanne,had eight children.


In 1902,the family who lived in Saint-Pierre moved to Fort-de-France just before Mount Pelee expolosion.As Saint-Pierre refugees they resettled in France.Raphael was 11 when he entered the French school system.He attended the best high schools in Paris (Lycee Montaigne and Saint-Louis) where he completed his studies and then enrolled in veterinary schools in Lyons,graduating in the summer of 1914 just before the beginning of World War I.


Twenty-three-year-old Elize joined a colonial infantry regiment,first as private and then he was later assigned as the regiment's veterinarian.During the war he receive the Croix de Guerre.


In 1919 he married Caroline Hayotte who was from the same mixed-race community in Martinigue.Shortly afterwads the couple moved to Sable-sur-Sarthe,a cattle and horse producing region that at the time had no veterinarian.They eventually had one one daughter,Jeanne,who died in 1938.At the time they were the only blacks in town.Elize,joined,the farmer's association,was a board member of the saving bank,and presided over the local veterans association.He also developed a reputation as a classic music lover and a local photographer with his own dark room.


Elize joined the socialist party (SFIO) in 1924.Five years later in 1929 he was elected may of  Sable making him the first black office holder in France in modern times.It was particulary important achievement because Sable was in a conservative and Catholic region.


As mayor Raphael worked hard to modernize Sable.He led the town in creating its first kindergarten,a community center,a public soccer field,and the first public swimming pool west of paris.


In 1935 Raphael returned to Martinique as the representative of the French Association of Mayors. He was there for the 300th anniversary celebration of Martinique's link to France.While in Martinique he traveled back back to his birth city,Saint Pierre,where he was welcomed by the mayor,Maxence Elize,who was one of his brothers.


When French entered World War II in 1939,Raphael was mobilized into army as a veterinarian with the rank of captain.After the fall of France to Nazi Germany on June 22,1940 Raphael returned to Sable but was removed from the office of mayor by the German Army which now occupied the town.In 1943 he entered the Resistance network to gather information about the Nazis and French collaborators.


Raphael was arrested by the Nazis in November 1943 and sent to prison first in France and then to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in east-central German in January 1944.One year later,on February 9,1945,he was killed by an allied bomb during a bombing raid.


The public square facing the town hall in sable was named after Raphael in 1946.A second public square in Le Mans was named after him in 2011.In 2013 the French government issued a stamp to honor his memory.

"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.

"James E.Reed."

James of two important African American photographers in New Bedford's (Massachusetts),early history.James  had begun to take pictures of city streets,whaleships,and people,whether African American,or white.By 1895,he was bringing in enough revenue to open his own studio,which he did with his partner Phineas C.Headley.Headley & Reed were the premier studio 5 Purchase Street in New Bradford and ran a successful business from 1890-1896.For unknown reasons Phineas left the business in 1896,James continued on at this location for another four years until 1900.James struck out on his own at another location.James married Anna Jourdain and occupied a homestead at 172 Arnold Street,one of two octagon houses in New Bedford in 1880.His wife studied at the Swain School of Design and used the skills she learned there to embellish James's photo by coloring and tinting them.This breathed into otherwise black and white photo ads surley contributed to the popularity of Headley & Reed in eventually James when he struck out on his own.His wife also worked on Tiffany style lampshades for the famous Pairpoint Company of New Bedford.Their home was built in 1866 for the beard family,became known as the Reeed house as the family occupied the site for over 100 years until 1992 when it was sold to Gary & Lyn Newton.On the 100th anniversary (March 17,1991) of the Reed family having occupied the home,they held an open house.They had at least one child,Elise Jourdain Cole who lived until passing away on March 24,1996 living to the age of 102.

"Calvin Littlejohn" [August 1,1909-September 6,1993]

 

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"Lois K. Alexander"(June 7,1916-September 29,2007)

Born Lois Marie Kindle in Little Rock Arkansas where as a young woman she liked peering into

department store windows to sketch dress designs. Lois later started custom-wear botinques in Washington and Harlem.That devotion and the desire to teach African American youths the techniques for entering the garment industry have led to her involvement in many 20th century fashion enterprises.Lois was a 36-year federal employee,mostly with the Department of Urban Development and its predecessor agencies.Lois retired in 1978 as a HUD community planning and development officer in New York.Meanwhile as a 1938 graduate of Virginia's Hampton Institute and having earned her master's degree in retailing,fashion and merchandising from New York University,Lois laid a strong foundation for pioneering spirit.In the 1950s,she did freelance photography for African American newspapers and was vice president of the Captital Press Club,an organization for African American journalists.Influenced by the life and commitment of Sojourner Truth.Lois,selected the present BFM site,2007 Vermont Avenue,NW in Washington,DC,because it was formerly the Sojourner Truth Home for Women & Girls and its recognition by the National Park Service as a possible Undergroundrail site.To highlight her community involvement,Lois worked with and considered Dr.Mary McLeod Bethune her mentor.She was the founder of Harlem Institute of fashion,National Association of Milliners,Dressmakers and Tailors,and The Black Fashion Museum and author of her soon to be re-released (1982) book titled Blacks in the History of Fashion.Lois was named by the business magazine,Dollars and Sense,as one of 1985's top 100 Business and Professional Women in the united states.Lois held a number of distinguished citations,including the Josephine Shaw Lowell Award,Kobrand Corporation's Tattinger,Champagne,Fashion Award,the New York Urban Leagues,Frederick Douglass award,and a certificate of recognition from the City Council of Detriot.A longtime Harlem,resident,Lois was also a board member of the Uptown Chamber of commerce.Tributes to Lois Alexander Lane was held at the Schomberg Center of New York City,July 1998 and the Design Center of Washington,DC,October 1998.Lois died at the Magnolia Center nursing home in Lanham.She had Alzheimer's disease and liver cance.

"Richard Samuel Roberts"{April 4,1880-1936}

Born in South Carolina he was a self-taught photographer,who
operated his own studio In Fernandina,Florida,where he gained a
reputation as a portrait maker.Success was achieved as a result of
long hours of study that could be only done after he had finished his
day's work as stevedore and later as a fireman laborer.He read books and
magazines on photography,becoming familiar with the nunnces of  lighting,angles,shadows,and backgrounds.His dream was t become a master portrait-maker,with every picture a true reproduction of the subject.He rented a studio in the heart of South Carolina's African-American commercial district on Washington Street in 1922.At the same time working as a post office custodian from 4 a.m.-noon.For the next 14 years,the thousands of pictures that Richard took comprise a stunning visual history of every aspect of the African-American community in South Carolina's capital city.He frequently took his camera into the
heart of the segregated African American District of Columbia and also to other towns and cities in the state.Richard's clientele was,for the most part,Columbia's African American populatin.He photographed every facet of
the community including bankers,teachers,social workers,and magicians,he also made portraits of all people,regardless of race or economic conditions.
Because his small studio had only limied flor space and poor natural light ,he was forced to
improvsed in use of his equipment and background Richard was an innovator and a perfectionist,and he prided himself on the quality of his work."No other gift causes so much  real and lasting joy as
the gift of your photograph,"he wrote in a leaflet publicizing his activities in the 1920s.To have " a true likeness"of oneself was just as ecessary as every other necessity in life.
After his death his children stored his negativities in the family home in theArsenal Hill section
of Columbia.His work cae to light in 1977,when researchers at the University of South Carolina's South Carolinian Library,though his children,retrieved more than 3,000 negatives.

"Carl-Fraction" (December 16,1919-March 17,2000)

He was born in Saint Paul Minnesota,to James & Opal Fraction,one of

six children,when he was young,the family moved to Iowa.Carl graduated from Des Moines North High School in 1937,where he played in the high school band.Carl enlisted in the Air Force and was discharged in 1945,he later contracted tuberculosis.While in the Air Force,he learned photography.He married Celeste Griffin in 1948;together they had one daughter Ann.He enrolled at Macalester College in St.Paul,and and graduated in 1958 with a degree in microbiology.Gillette Corporation hired him soon after he graduated to work in its chemistry department.Gillette was the mother company to many hair care products.Carl's chemical formation was the base for the hair gel "dippy dew."In the community, Carl was a member of Alpha Kappa Fraternity and the Twin Cities Reel & Trigger Club.He attended St.Peters AME Church,where he sang in the choir.He played in a number of community bands in Minnesota.

"Thomas Askew"(1848-1914)

Atlanta's first African American photographer.Began his photography career career in the 1880s at Motes Studio downtown Atlanta.He later operated his own studio from home on Sumit Avenue.Three years after his death,the Great Fire of 1917 destroyed all of his photographic equipment and naegatives.A number of his prints remain in private collections.

"Roy-Decarava" (December 9,1919-October 27,2009)

He was raised by his mama and graduated with a major in art from the Straubenmuller Textile High School in 1938.While still in high school he worked as a sign painter and display artist and in the poster division of the Works Projects Administration (WPA) in New York City.In his senior year he won a competition to design a medal for the National Tuberculosis Association's high school essay contest and upon graduation received ac scholarship for excellence in art.Supporting himself as a commercial artist,Roy studied painting at Cooper Union with Byron Thomas & Morris Kanton from 1938-1940,and lithography and drawing at the Harlem Art Center from 1940-1942.He attended rge George Washington Carver Art School in 1944 and 1945,studying painting with Charles White.In 1946 his serigraph won the print award at the Atlanta University Fifth Annual Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture (a national juried exhibition for black artists),and the following year he had a one-man show at the Serigraph Gallery in New York.In 1946 Roy began to use photography as a way to sketch ideas for paintings,and by 1947 he had decided to concentrate exclusively on it.He lacked formal training,he approached photography as "just another medium than an artist would use";he quickly established a distinctive style and chose a subject-the people of Harlem-that engaged him deeply and productively.Some of his strongest work dates  from the late 1940s,and early 1950s,including Graduation (1949) and Gittel (1950)His first photographic exhibition was in 1950 at New York's Fort-Fourth Street Gallery,and that year he sold three prints to the Museum of Modern Art.In 1952 Roy became the tenth photographer and among the earliest artist to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.Continuing his work in Harlem during the fellowship year,he produced over 2,000 images;Roy wanted to show,he said,"[African Americans'] beauty and the image that we presented in our being." In 1955 four of his photographs appeared in the Museum of Modern Art's famous Family of Man exhibition and best-selling book.In the same year,141 photographs were published with a text by Langston Hughes in their much-acclaimed classic The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955),a tale of everyday events in the lives of a fictional yet representative Harlem family.Roy formed his style at a time in photographic history when the social documentary ethos of the 1930s was given way to more formalist aesthetic,which especially appreciated a photographer's manipulation of the unique qualities of the medium.He was influenced by the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson,whose theory with factual content of the "decisive moment" credits formal organization equally with factual content in conveying essential meaning in a photograph.Like Cartier Roy, uses a small camera,avoids, contrived settings, often shooting in the street, and achieves important,often metaphorical,effects through compodition,as in Sun and Shade (1952) and Boy Playing,Man Walking (1966).In deed,Roy has taken pains throughut his career to foster inter.

"James Lesesne Wells" (November 2,1902-January 20,1993)

Some of his art work.

Was an educator,artist and photographer.From Atlanta,Georgia,his

daddy was a baptist minister and his mama a teacher.The family moved to Florida.James first experience as artist was through his mama,who encouraged him to help out with art instruction in her kindergarten classes.At thirteen,he won his first prize in painting and a second prize in woodworking at the Florida State Fair.James studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania before transferring to Columbia University in New York,where he majored in art.His exposure to an exhibition of African sculpture at the Brooklyn Museum of Art inspired him.He was also greatly influenced by the woodcuts of Albrecht Durer and the German Expressionists:Ernst Kircher,Kari Schmidt-Rottiuff,Ott Muller,& Emile Nolde.Unlike most of contemporaries,he saw prints as a major art form.After graduation,James created block prints to illustrate articles & publications such as Willis Richardson's plays and Pageants of Negro Life.In April 1929 his work was included in an exhibition of "international Modernists"at the New Art Circle Gallery.Later that year,he was invited to join the faculty at Howard University as a crafts teacher.James taught clay modeling,ceramics,sculpture,metal &block printing.After two years he convinced the school that he and linoleum cutting belonged in the College of Fine Arts.James was an innovator in the field of printmaking.After World War II,he spent a sabbatical year working in Stanley Hayter's Atelier 17.During the 1950s & 1960s,he taught and won many art prizes.As an activists,James joined his brother-in-law Eugene Davidson,president of the local NAACP,chapter,in protesting segregation  in lunch counters,stores,and the nearly all white police department and as a result, was often harassed.This persecution probably accounted for some of the religious themes in his work.James retired from Howard University in 1968,painting and making prints into his eighties.Color linoleum prints became his specialty.In 1986,the Washington Project for the Arts assembled a major exhibition of his work,and in 1973,Fisk University mounted another one-man show.His work Flight into Egypt was exhibited in 1990 in the Harmon's "Against the Odds"exhibition and still looked as modern as it had when it was created.James was a leading graphic artist and art teacher,whose work reflected the vitality of the Harlem Renaissance.

"Charles "Tennie Harris"(October 27,1908-June 12,1908)

Was born in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania.The youngest son William A.& Ella

Mae "Olga" Taliaferro Harris who lived in the Hill District of Pittsburgh,the family owned the Masio Hotel on Wylie Avenue.Early in the 1930s he purchased his first camera and opened a photography studio.Charles freelance for the Washington,D.C. news picture magazine,Flash! From 1935-1975 he chronicled life in the African American communities of the city Pittsburgh Courier,one of America's oldest African American newspaper.He was nicknamed "One Shot"became he rarely made his subjects sit for retakes.Charles took on more than 80,000 images during his career.The body of his work constitutes arguably the largest and most complete photographic documentation of a minority community in the U.S.Charles attended Watt School,now the Robert L.Vann School,after graduating he worked as a chauffeur and mechanic with his brother William "Woggle Harris until 1938.Woogle also owned the Crystal Barber Shop on Wylie Avenue and was involved in the "numbers"or "policy"lottery.In the late 1920s Charles became a founding member of the Pittsburgh Crawford, a sandlot baseball team.He even played for them until 1930,when the Crawford entered Negro League competition.During that time,in 1929,Charles bought his first professional camera with money from his brother.He began taking photographs of local and visiting celebrities for Washington-based! Magazine Flash! not long after this Charles married Ruth M.Butler;they had one son Charles A.Harris,they separated around 1932.Four years later,Charles became a freelance photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier.In 1938,he opened his studio in Pittsburgh's Hill District at 2128 Center Avenue.In 1944,he married Elsa L.Elliott and had four children:Ira Vann Harris,Lionel L.Harris,Crystal Harris,and Cheryl Harris.In 1953 Charles closed his studio,he did not retire from the Pittsburgh Courier until 1975.In 1986,he signed a management agreement with Dennis Morgan,Pittsburgh artist and entrepreneur,for his photographic works.He died at his home where he lived for most of his life.Charles archive is housed in the African Studies Department of the University of Pittsburgh.

"Augustus Washington {9-21-1920-June 7 1874}stus

He was the son of a former slave and a woman of South Asian decent.His mother died when he was young a stepmother,also a former slave raised him.Augustus struggled to obtain schooling,first in Trenton and later at the Oneida Institute in Whitesboro,New York,Kimball Union Academy in New Hampshire,and Darmouth College.In 1843,he moved to Hartford and opened a daguerrean studio to help finance education.Finishing education in 1847,Augustus returned to Hartford;open a studio for a short period of time.During this time many of his portraits were political and social figures of the era and reflect his sentiment about slavery.In 1851 he expressed pessimism about prospects of African Americans in America society in a letter to New York Tribune.In 1853 Augustus immigrated to Liberia to work as a teacher,farmer stone operator and Daguerreotypist.One year later,he expressed enthusiasm about his his adopted land in a letter,stating that,"I believe that i shall do a thousand times more in Africa."The Last reference to Washington's work as a Daguerreotypist dates from 1858.He never regretted his decision to immigrate to Liberia,and when he died in Monrovia,his death was mourned as a "severe loss to Western Africa."

"Addison-Scurlock" (June 19,1883-December 16,1964)

Born in Fayetteville,North Carolina he graduated from there,and in 1900,moved with his family to Washington,D.C. His father George Clay Scurlock,had run unsuccessfully for the North Carolina

Senate.He also worked as a messager for the U.S. Treasury Department,While studying law and he later opened a law office on the 1100 block of U street.Addison began his career as a photographer as an apprentice to Moses P.Rice who studios on Pennsylvania Avenue.By 1904,he learned the basics of photographic portraiture and the entire range of laboratory work.That same year,he started his own business at his parents' home on Florida Avenue.Addison photographed students at Howard University,M Street,Armstrong High Schools,African-Americans universities,and high schools throughout the South.In 1907,he won a gold medal for photography at the Jamestown Exposition.He opened the Scurlock Studio in the African-American community's theatre district in 1911,and concentrated on portraiture and general photography.His clients included brides,successful peoples,politicians and presidents,convention guests,and socialites.A 1976 Washington Post article by Jacqueline Trescott read,"For years one on the marks of arriving socially in black Washington was to have your portrait in Scurlock's window."In addition to studio portraits,he mastered the use of the panoramic camera and shot conventions,banquets,and graduations.By the 1920s,Addison had earned national reputation.He was the official photographer of Howard University until his death in 1964,and he recorded all aspects of

university life.Addison also produced a series of portraits of African-American leaders that historian Carter G.Woodson disturbed to African-American schools nationwide.One of his most significant photographs was that of Marion Anderson singing in front of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939.A famous story told about him is that while shooting Kevin Coolidge with the Dunbar Cadet on the White House Lawn,he walked up to the president and moved him to another position for the sake of a better picture,much to the dismay of the Secret Service.Addison and his wife,Mamie Estelle,lived just a few blocks from the studio with their four sons Addison Jr.,Robert,George,and Walter.Mamie served as the studio's business manager.From 1948 until 1952,Robert,and George managed Capital School of Photography.Among their students were future Washington Post photogrphers and a young Jacqueline Bouvier who became the of John F.Kennedy.As founder of the Scurlock Photographic Studio, he took portraits of such notables as educators Booker T.Washington and Mary McLeod Bethune,composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor-Taylor,engineer Archie Alexander,political leader W.E.B. Du Bois,former first lady Mamie Eisenhower,singer Billy Eckstine,Dr.Charles Richard Drew,opera singer Madame Lillian Evanti,and poet Sterling Brown while documenting key moments in Washington,D.C. history.In 1964,Robert brought the Scurlock studio from his father from his father and purchased a studio on Connecticut Avenue.The Connecticut Avenue studio closed in the early 1970s and the 9th Street studio was demolished in 1983 for the Metro system.

"James Presley Ball Sr."(1825-May 4,1904)

Was a prominent African-American photographer,abolitionist,and businessman.James was born to William and Susan Ball in 1825.He learned daguerreotype photography from John B.Bailey of Boston,who like John was "a freeman of color.James opened a one room daguerreotype studio in Cincinnati,Ohio in 1845.The business did not prosper,so he worked as an itinerant daguerreotypist,setting briefly in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania,then in Richmond Virginia in 1846 to develop a more successful studio near the State Capitol Building.In 1847,James again departed for Ohio,again as a traveling daguerreotypist.He settled in Cincinnati in 1849 and opened a studio where his brother Thomas Ball become an operator.The gallery,known as "Ball's Daguerrean Gallery of the West"or Ball's Great Daguerrean Gallery of the West,"ascended "from a small gallery to one of the great galleries of the Midwest.Starting in 1854 and continuing "for about four years,"Robert Sheldon Duncanson worked in Ball's studio retouching portraits and coloring photographic prints.Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion in 1854 described the gallery as displaying 187 photographs by James and 6 painting by Robert;the gallery was replete with elegance and beauty,"with walls "bordered"with gold leaf and flowers,"master piece"furniture,a piano and mirrors.James opened the seperate Ball and Thomas Gallery with his brother-in-law Alexander Thomas.In 1855,he published an abolitionist pamphlet accompained by a 600-yard-long panramic painting entitled "Mammoth Pictorial Tour of the United States Comprising Views of the African Slave Trade,"Robert probably participated in the production of the painting.During 1855 Ball's daguerreotypes were shown at the Ohio State Fair and at the Ohio Mechanics Annual Exhibition.In 1856 James traveled to Europe.The Ball and Thomas Gallery was destroyed by a tornado in May 1860,but was later rebuilt with assistance from the community.During the 1870s James ended his partnership with Thomas and moved to Greenville,Mississippi;Vidalia Louisiana;St.Louis,Missouri;and then Minneapolis Minnesota,where he started a new studio.By 1887,the studio was known as "J.P.Ball & Son,Artistic Photographers,"his son was named James Presley Ball,Jr.In September 1887,James Sr.became the offical photographer of the 25th anniversary celebration of the Emancipation Proclamation.In October 1887,James again moved this time to Helena Montana where the "J.P.Ball &Son"studio was established.By 1894,James had become active in politics in Helena;for example,he was nominated for a county coroner position which he declined.One of the notable series of photographs he took his stay in Helena involved William Biggerstaff (an African-American man) before,during,and after he was hanged in 1896 for committing murder.In 1900,the Ball family probably moved to Seattle, Washington,where James opened the Globe Photo Studio.He may have relocated to Portland Oregon in 1901.The family moved to Honolulu in 1902,James died there.

"James Augustus Joseph Vanderzee"(June 29,1886-May 15 1983)

Photographer and entrepreneur,was born in Lenox, Massachusetts,the second of six children of

John VanderZee and Susan Elizabeth Egberts.Part of a working-class African American community that provided services to wealthy summer residents,the VanDerZees (sometimes written Van Der Zee or Van DerZee)and their large extended family operated a laundry and bakery and worked at local luxury hotels,James played the violin and piano and enjoyed a bucolic childhood riding bicycles,swimming,skiing, and ice fishing with his siblings and cousins.He received his first camera from a mail order catalogue just before his fourteenth birthday and taught himself how to take and develop photographs using his family as subjects.He left school that same year and began work as a hotel waiter.In 1905 he and his brother Walter moved to New York City.James was working as an elevator operator when he met a seamstress,Kate Brown.They married when Kate became pregnant,and a daughter, Rachel,was born in 1907.A year later a son, Emile,was born but died within a year.(Rachel died of peritonitis in 1927.)In addition to a series of services jobs,James worked sporadically as a musician.In 1911 he landed his first photography- related at a portrait studio located in the largest department store in Newark,New Jersey.He was hired as a darkroom assistant, he quickly advanced to photographer when patrons began asking for "the colored fellow."The following year his sister Jennie invited him to set up a small studio in the Toussaint Conservatory of Art, a school she had established in her Harlem brownstone. Convinced that he could make a living as a photographer, James wanted to open his own studio, but Kate was opposed to the venture,This fundamental disagreement contributed to the couple's divorce in 1917.He found a better companion and collaborator in Gaynella Greenlee, a woman of German and Spanish descent who, after marrying James in 1917, claimed to be a light-skinned African American.That same year the couple opened the Guarantee Photo Studio,later the GGG Photo Studio, on West 135th street,next door to the Harlem branch of the New York Public Library.This was the first of four studio sites James would rent over the next twenty five years.With his inventive window displays and strong word of mouth within the burgeoning African American community,James quickly established himself as Harlem's preeminent photographer.By the early 1920s he had developed a distinct style of portrait photography that emphasized narrative, mood, and the uniqueness of each image. Harlem's African American citizens-couples,families,-coworkers, and even family pets-had their portraits taken by James.With a nod to Victorian photographers,he employed a range of props,including fashionable clothes and exotic costumes,and elaborate backdrops(many of which he painted himself) featuring landscapes or architectural elements."I posed everyone according to their type and personality and therefore almost every picture was different"James made every sitter look and feel like a celebrity,even mimicking popular media images on occasion.In James photographs,sitters appear sophisticated,urbane,and self-aware, and Harlem emerges as a prosperous,healthy, and diverse community, Another characteristic of his portrait work was his creative manipulation of prints and negatives,which included retouching,double printing,and hand painting images.In addition to improving sitters'imperfections, retouching and hand painting added dramatic and narrative details,like tinted roses or a wisp of smoke rising from an abandoned cigarette.He often employed double printing-at times using as many as three or four negatives to make a print-to introduce theatrical storytelling elements into his portraits.Such attention to detail was commercial venture and that making his patrons happy and his images one of a kind helped business.He regularly took on trade work,creating calendars and advertisements and, in later years,photographing autopsies for insurance companies and identification cards for taxi drivers.But portraits, of both the living and the the dead,were his bread and butter.Funerary photography, a practice begun in the nineteenth century and popular in some communities through the mid-twentieth century, was a major part of his business.His daily visits to funeral parlors culminated in book Harlem Book of the Dead (1978).Harlemites of every background hired James to document their weddings,baptisms,graduations,and businesses with portraits and on site-photographs.Organizations as diverse as the Monte Carlo Sporting Club,Les Modernes Bridge Club,the New York Black Yankees,the Renaissance Big Five basketball team, Madame C.J. Walker's Beauty Salon,the Dark Tower Literary Salon, and the Black Cross Nurses commissioned his portraits.Today these photographs serve as an invaluable and unique visual record of African American life during Harlem's heyday.In the 1920s and 1930s and into the 1940s James photographed the African American leaders living and working in Harlem,including the entertainment and literary luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance Bill "Bojangles"Robinson,Jelly Roll Morton,and Countee Cullen;the box legends Jack Johnson and Joe Louis;and the political,business, and religious leaders Adam Clayton Powell Sr.and Adam Clayton Powell Jr.,A'lelia Walker,Father Divine,and Daddy Grace.