Kicha's photos with the keyword: African American Woman

Ms. Baker in one of her dazzling gowns.

Lucretia Marchbanks was one of the most interesting and most beloved people in Deadwood, South Dakota’s pioneer days. She was born into slavery on March 25, 1832, in Putman County, Tennessee, the oldest of eleven children. She was the bondswoman of Martin Marchbanks, whose father had settled near Turkey Creek east of Algood, Tennessee. Her father, of mixed racial heritage, was a half-brother of Martin Marchbanks. Prior to the enactment of the 13th Amendment, before the firing of the guns at Fort Sumter had announced the opening of the U. S. Civil War, her liberty-loving father had purchased his freedom with $700 which he had saved over the years. Lucretia Marchbanks, who acquired her father’s frugal industrious habits, grew to womanhood on the master’s estate where she was fully trained in housekeeping and the culinary arts. Her master, Martin Marchbanks, gave Lucretia to his youngest daughter whom she accompanied to the Western frontier, reputed a land of gold, fortune and romance. They traveled and lived for a period time in California, and later, a free woman, she returned to her old home in Tennessee. Once again, Lucretia set out again for the untamed west where she remained for the rest of her life. Like many others, she was lured into the Black Hills by reports of gold. Lucretia joined the “Black Hills Gold Rush,” arriving in historic Deadwood Gulch, a bustling mining camp, on June 1 1876, where she secured a job, working as the kitchen manager in the Grand Central Hotel. Soon, the hotel, which really wasn’t that grand, was better known for the great food served by Lucretia in the frontier hotel’s restaurant. “Aunt Lou,” as she was known, labored hard to make her way in a sometimes unforgiving boomtown of the West. Except for “Aunt Sally” Campbell, who came with the George Armstrong Custer Black Hills Expedition in 1874, most believe that Lucretia Marchbanks was the first black woman to live in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory. After she left the kitchen, Lucretia worked for four successive mine superintendents for the small sum of $40 per month. That was a small price, a real bargain for anyone who could afford to employ a woman with her ability and training. Two years later she was offered a better position as a cook for the Golden Gate Mine in nearby Lead. Her work ethic, loyalty to duty and fine character were evident to all who knew her. She then left Deadwood to become the manager of the Rustic Hotel at the DeSmet Mine. Gossip of her culinary skills spread like a wildfire and she was soon hired away again as a cook and housekeeper for a boarding house owned by Harry Gregg in Sawpit Gulch, also in Lead. They catered to the DeSmet Mine workers. One historical account tells that when she was late getting back from a meeting, she was still able to fix an evening meal for the miners in 25 minutes, plus lunch buckets for all on the night shift. Contrary to what was seen on the HBO series “Deadwood,” Lucretia Marchbanks was never an employee of George Hearst, the owner of the world famous Homestake Mine. Her final employer was Harry Gregg, with whom she worked until 1883 when she resigned and opened her own establishment, the Rustic Hotel at the mouth of Sawpit Gulch located just down the road from Deadwood. She was considered to be the finest cook in the Black Hills at that time. She has been regaled for her excellent plum puddings, among other culinary delights. A Mr. William A. Reamer, who boarded with her, asked her for the recipe and she replied, “Oh, just a handful of this and a handful of that.” Lucretia was more commonly known throughout Deadwood and the Black Hills as “Aunt Lou.” She was also lovingly known to some people of the area as “Mahogany Lou” Marchbanks. For example: The New York Stock Exchange in discussing a Black Hills Mining News article asked “Who is Aunt Lou?” The Black Hills Daily Times answered in an article entitled “We’ll Tell You Who She Is” - Aunt Lou is an old and respected colored lady who has had charge of the superintendent’s establishment of the DeSmet mine as housekeeper, cook and the 'superintendent of all superintendents’ who have ever been employed at the mine. Her accomplishments as culinary artist are beyond all praise. She rules the house where she presides with autocratic power by Divine right brooking no cavil or presumptuous interference. The mine superintendent may be a big man in the mines or the mill but the moment he sets foot within her realm he is but a meek and ordinary mortal. “She is a skillful nurse as well as a fine cook and housekeeper, her services to the victims of mountain fever never received an even part of the praise to which they are entitled.” There was a festival in the City Hall of Golden Gate in 1880 for the purpose of the raising of funds for the Congregational church, a prize of a diamond ring was raffled off and then given to the most popular woman in the Black Hills. Her competitors for this high honor were a sizable number of popular white women. Many men and women, citizens of all walks of life voted with their money for their favorite woman: “Aunt Lou.” She easily won and was awarded the coveted prize. She was however, was more than just a kind friendly woman with great cooking skills; she was also a tough and demanding kitchen manager and stood no intimidation from her rowdy patrons. It is said that on one day she proved that when a Mexican man came into the restaurant boasting that he had killed an Indian and acting as though he’d like to do the same again … kill someone else. While nervous customers looked on, “Aunt Lou” confronted him while brandishing a large knife and in no time, the stranger was quick to take his leave. Lucretia finally decided that she had cooked long enough. She retired from the Rustic Hotel business in 1885 and sold the hotel to a Mrs. A.M. Porter. “Aunt Lou” purchased a ranch at Rocky Ford, Wyoming, (between Sundance and Beulah) from A. C. Settle. She moved to the ranch that same year and was very active in raising cattle and horses. She with the help of a hired hand named George Baggely, who worked for Lucretia for 20 years and managed the ranch. Various historical records show that she conducted her ranch in the very businesslike manner everyone would have expected. She died in 1911 and is buried in Beulah Cemetery. Black Hills Pioneer, Destination Deadwood, by David K Whitlock

Maude Brooks Cotton (1872-1945), a native of Oberlin, Ohio, received her early school training at Knoxville College. Later she enrolled at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1896. In 1900 she was married to Reverend John Adam Cotton (1865 - 1943), and immediately journeyed in the mission field for the United Presbyterian Church. In 1903, she joined her husband in Henderson, North Carolina, where he was called to pastor and serve as president of the Henderson Normal School. Making him the second African American to do so. She was an active member of the organization and also wrote the words and music for the Federated Song. "We Are Lifting as We Climb." She was a charter member and local and state president of the Parent -Teachers Association. In 1943, she accompanied her husband to Knoxville College, where he was named the first black president and served until his death that same year. She was the mother of Carol C. Bowie, an educator. She is interred on the grounds of Jubilee Hospital. (Courtesy of Andre D. Vann) FYI: Some of her other interests: In 1914 she attended the Convention of the National Association of Colored Women. ( Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, By Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore ) Info: Vance County, North Carolina, By Andre Vann, (2000) Photo: Beck Cultural Exchange Center, Knoxville, Tennessee / Knaffl Brothers, Knoxville, Tennessee, (circa 1890s).

One of the first African American women to specialize in ragtime coon song singing was Bessie Gillam, a product of one of Detroit, Michigan's premier black musical families. Her father, barber musician Charles Gillam, had been prominent in the local black string and brass milieu until his death in 1890, while her older brother Harry appeared in local community productions like Ed Rector's Juvenile Minstrels before venturing out with some of the major black road shows of 1890-1910. Source: Indianapolis Freeman; PosterMuseum, Greve

The great La Baker during a skit at Casino de Paris, circa 1932.

Ora Brown Stokes (1882 - 1957), was born in Chesterfield County and raised in Fredericksburg, Virginia. During her life, she worked to improve the lives of African American women and girls. For twenty years she was employed as a probation officer with the Richmond City Juvenile Court. She organized the National Protective League for Negro Girls and a local chapter of the Council of Colored Women. In 1912, she started the Richmond Neighborhood Association to help black working women, and it quickly expanded to support a nursery, a residence for young girls, and other community services. Stokes was also president of the Southeastern Section of the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs and the Virginia Negro League of Women Voters. Info and Image: History of the American Negro (Virginia Edition), 1921.

Ethel Waters was born the daughter of Louise Howard, on October 31 1900, at her great-aunt Ida’s home in Chester, Pennsylvania. Waters was a product of rape. At the age of 13, Waters’ mother was raped by John Waters (pianist). Waters said about her childhood, “I never was a child. I never was coddled, or liked, or understood by my family. I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.” Waters’ never had a relationship with her mother. Louise Howard moved away when Waters was a child, leaving her to the care of her grandmother, Sally Anderson. However, Waters’ spent most of her time with her aunts, Vi and Ching, because her grandmother worked long hours. Though both alcoholic with terrible lifestyles, Waters’ aunts loved to sing. Waters wrote in her autobiography, Eye is on the Sparrow: “Vi had a sweet, soft voice. Ching’s was bell-like and resonant…One of the first pieces I remember Vi singing was ‘I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard.’ Ching’s favorites were ‘There’ll Come a Time’ and ‘Volunteer Organist.’ But in the beginning it was always the story in the song that enchanted me.” These last few words explain Waters’ style of singing more than anything else. Waters was always able to tell a story with her music, though she would not figure this out until later in life. As a young girl, Waters was exposed to a lot of negative things. She befriended a prostitute and witnessed the sexual relationships of her older sisters (they all shared a room). She grew up fast. Though she was exposed to these things, she didn’t allow them to influence her. Waters’ first steady job was at the Harrod Apartments in Philadelphia. She was a maid—a very humble job compared to what she would soon land. On October 17 1917, Waters’ seventeenth birthday, her friends convinced her to perform at a Halloween party. She sang a blues ballad which the crowd and a black vaudeville team (a group who would perform variety shows), Braxton and Nugent, loved. They approached her after the show and offered her $10 a week to join their team. Waters then began her steady ascent to fame. Her first performance was in 1917 at the Lincoln Theater in Baltimore. She sang solos and was known as Sweet Mama Stringbean because, “I was so scrawny and tall.” Though the crowd was tough, and often louder than the performances, Waters’ voice would always capture the audience. One night Waters decided to add a new song to her show. She took the song, “St. Louis Blues” and sang it more slowly, with more pathos. She says, “You could have heard a pin drop in that rough, rowdy audience.” Her version of the song is now a classic and nown to be the greatest blues song every written. However, she was not involved with the most honest people. Waters soon found out that Braxton and Nugent were pocketing extra money from her act. At the time two other females were performing with Braxton and Nugent, as the Hill Sisters. After finding out about the scam Waters immediately left and the Hill Sisters followed. They decided to travel together as their own act. They performed the same songs they did in Baltimore. One of them was Waters’ famous song, “St. Louis Blues.” They moved from theater to theater, performing for a different crowd every time. Though the Hill Sisters had good times, the trio did not last. The original Hill Sisters, Jo and Maggie, were jealous. There was backstage rivalry which stemmed from Waters’ success. Though they were a trio, Waters soon felt singled out and unwanted. The trio turned into a duo, with just Jo and Ethel Waters. Though they traveled and sang together, Waters often took the spotlight. Once, Waters landed a job at 91 Decatur Street in Atlanta. That same night, Bessie Smith was on the bill. Smith had a lot of say with the managers, and forbid Waters to sing any blues while Smith was there. However, during Waters’ performance, the crowd began to shout, “Blues! Blues! Blues! Come on, Stringbean, we want your blues!” The manager was forced to revoke the ban placed on Waters. Bessie Smith personally gave Waters permission to sing “St. Louis Blues” and said to Waters after the show, “Come here long goody. You ain’t so bad. It’s only that I never dreamed that anyone would be able to do this to me in my own territory and with my own people. And you know damn well that you can’t sing worth a--” Waters had come into her own. She was a one-woman act. “I still had no feelings of having roots. I was still alone and an outcast,” Waters says about her time with the Hill Sisters. After being injured in a car accident in 1918, Waters went back to Philadelphia. She placed her singing career on hold and began washing dishes at an automat. She did this until Joe Bright, a black actor-producer from New York, persuaded her to go back on stage. Wearily, in 1919, Waters accepted Bright’s offer and performed at Lincoln Theater in Harlem. It was during her second week at Lincoln Theater that her acquaintance, Alice Ramsey—a dancer—invited her to sing at Edmund’s Cellar. Waters began working there for $2 a night. Her salary came from the audience in the form of tips. There were no set hours for work. Waters said, “There was no set closing time…I used to work from nine until unconscious.” Again, she changed her style of singing. Andrea Barnett writes in All-Night Party, “A pianist, Lou Henley, challenged Ethel to expand her repertoire, urging her to tackle more complex, ‘cultural’ numbers. But to Ethel’s surprise, she found that she could characterize and act out the songs just as she did with her blues. Audiences were enthusiastic.” More and more people would come to Edmond’s Cellar to watch Waters perform and tips became so good that musicians all around Harlem began looking for a chance to perform there. Waters’ finally began making a name for herself. Waters even went to Chicago at the request of Al Capone, who wanted her to sing at his bar. In 1929, with James P. Johnson as her accompanist, Ethel was singing songs like, “Am I Blue?” in On with the Show, where she was now making $1250 per week! In All-Night Party, Andrea Barnet says, “Ethel’s versatility and inventiveness were beginning to serve her well. She had the sexual swagger of singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey, yet her voice was softer. Ethel’s style was crisp and urbane, more northern.” She soon was noticed by Black Swan Records. She began recording with them and released a record with two sides. “Oh Daddy” and “Down Home Blues” were on that record, which sold 500, 000 copies in 6 months. Waters had recorded with pianist, Fletcher Henderson. The duo was so successful that they toured through the South and became the first black musicians to broadcast on the radio. Ethel continued to perform with various artists: female pianist, Pearl Wright, dancer, Ethel Williams (suspected to be her lover). She was living a lavish lifestyle, but her music never reflected her extravagant lifestyle. Instead, they reflected a more negative side of Waters’ adult life. Ethel Waters held a few rocky relationships in her lifetime. She once dated a drug addict and thief. She married and divorced three times, though she rarely talks about two of her marriages. There are also rumors that Waters was bisexual. Though she tried to keep this private, she was often seen fighting in public with whichever girlfriend she was with at the time. The nature of her relationships was often reflected in her music; her songs are full of heartbreak. There was also another aspect of Waters music that must be noted. According to Barnet, “…besides the sweeter quality of her voice, she was just as likely to take a more droll, comedic view of male-female relations, making mischievous sport of both sexes.” Though singing was a great part of Waters career, she also became an actress. Waters acted in a number of films and Broadway plays. In Waters’ opinion, her greatest role was that of Hagar in Mamba’s Daughters on Broadway in 1939 where she gave 17 curtain calls on opening night. In Mamba’s Daughters Waters plays a woman sent to exile after committing a minor crime. Consequently, she has to leave her daughter, Lissa, to the care of her mother, Mamba. Years later, Hagar must make one more sacrifice for her daughter, who is on her way to fame and fortune. She felt that Hagar paralleled her own mother’s life, and she put all of the emotion that she had into each performance. She was also the first black woman to ever star in a dramatic play on Broadway. In 1950, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Pinky. In the movie, she plays the grandmother of Pinky, a young light-skinned woman, who passes for white while attending school in the North. In that same year she won the New York Drama Critics Award for her role in the play, The Member of the Wedding. Her co-star was the actress Julie Harris. Waters continued to land a number of roles in films and plays. Sh>e performed in Cairo (1942), Cabin in the Sky (1943), The Member of the Wedding (1952) and was even a guest on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” in 1972. Ethel Waters also wrote two autobiographies. In 1951, His Eye is on the Sparrow was published. Her second autobiography, To Me it’s Wonderful, was published in 1977. Ethel Waters’ career began to slow as the blues began to fade out of pop culture, but she was able to continue her career largely because of her ability to identify with the characters she played and the songs that she sang. Waters died on September 2, 1977, in Chatsworth, California. She will always be remembered for her incredible vocal and theatrical performances, and for being a woman who broke racial boundaries by playing in black and white vaudeville companies and earning equal praise in both. Decades after her death, three of Waters’ singles were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame: “Dinah” in 1998 for Traditional Pop, “Stormy Weather” in 2003 for Jazz, and “Am I Blue?” in 2007 for Traditional Pop. Bio written by Julia J. Spiering, Fall 2004; revised and extended by Joanne A. Gedeon, Spring 2010

Rose McClendon was one of the most famous black dramatic actresses of the 1920s and 1930s. Although she did not become a professional actor until she was in her thirties, she consistently won critical acclaim for many of her acting roles and influenced the careers of many aspiring black actors of the period. Rose (Rosalie) V. McClendon was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1884 and with her parents, Sandy and Lena Jenkins Scott, migrated to New York City around 1890. At the age of twenty she married Dr. Henry Pruden McClendon, a licensed chiropractor, who supplemented his income by working as a Pullman porter. McClendon's interest in the theatre first found expression in the church where she directed and acted in cantatas at Saint Mark's African Methodist Episcopal Church in Manhattan. In 1916 she won a scholarship to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at Carnegie Hall under the tutelage of Franklin Sargent, and subsequently began her stage career. McClendon made her professional debut in Justice (1919-1920), a play starring writer, director, and actor Butler Davenport. Four years later she appeared in Roseanne (1924) with Charles Gilpin (and later Paul Robeson). In 1926 she gained prominence for her acting in Deep River, where she earned rave reviews, and in Paul Green's Pulitzer prize-winning folk tragedy, In Abraham's Bosom that starred Jules Bledsoe in the title role. Her reputation grew with her portrayal of Serena in Dubose and Dorothy Heyward's Porgy (1927) for which she received the Morning Telegraph Acting Award the following year (along with Ethel Barrymore and Lynn Fontanne). After a long run of one year in New York City, McClendon went on tour with Porgy to Chicago (nine weeks), London (approximately six weeks), Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Washington, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the northwest, and Canadian cities. Other plays she appeared in include Green's House of Connelly (1931), Black Souls, an all black production of Never No More and The Cat and the Canary (1932), Brain Sweat (which had a black cast) and Roll Sweet Chariot (1934), and Panic (1935). Her last starring role was as Cora in Langston Hughes' Mulatto (1935) which ran for 375 performances on Broadway, the second-longest run by a black playwright at that time. Hughes created the role of Cora specifically for her, unfortunately, McClendon left the cast in December when she became ill. Her love of the theatre inspired McClendon's stewardship of other African American's involvement in the theatre. From 1923 to 1925 McClendon was active in the Ethiopian Art Theatre. Also by the mid-1920s, she was a director for the Negro (Harlem) Experimental Theatre located at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library and, in addition, worked in a supervisory capacity with the Federal Theatre Project (Negro Unit), ca. 1935-1936. Furthermore, she served as a board member for the Theatre Union, which governed the Civic Repertory Theatre on West 14th Street. While working with the Federal Theatre Project, McClendon developed her vision of a black theatre company. Together with Dick Campbell she founded the Negro People's Theatre in 1935. Members of the advisory board included: Cheryl Crawford, Clifford Odets, Paul Green, Albert Bein, Countee Cullen, Herbert Kline, and Lena Bernstein. Officers of the small thirty-five member company were: Morris McKenney (chairman and director of the executive board), Campbell (vice chairman), Lena Bernstein (play reader), and Alston Burleigh (musical director). The company produced one play, Odets' Waiting for Lefty, prior to McClendon's untimely death at the age of 51 of pneumonia in 1936. Two years later, Campbell, his wife, actress Muriel Rahn, and George Norford established the Rose McClendon Players in Harlem in her honor. NYPL Archives & Manuscripts

Photo signed by Ms. Brown, "To Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune "The Greatest Woman I Know" Sincerely, Willa B. Brown 6/9/1943 [Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation, Daytona Beach, Florida] [Willa Beatrice Brown Chappell. RICHES of Central Florida] A portrait of Willa Beatrice Brown Chappell, which is housed at the Mary McLeod Bethune Foundation, located at 640 Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Boulevard in Daytona Beach, Florida. Chappell was the first African-American woman in the United States to earn a commercial pilots license and the first black female officer in the Civil Air Patrol. Brown was born on January 22, 1906, in Glasgow, Kentucky. She graduated from the Indiana State Teachers College in 1927 and received a Master's of Business Administration from Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, in 1937. After pursuing careers in education and social work, she later decided to take flying lessons from Cornelius R. Coffey, who she would later marry. The couple co-founded the Coffey School of Aeronautics at Harlem Airport in Chicago. Brown, Coffey, and Enoch P. Waters also established the National Airmen's Association of America in 1939. The NAAA's main objective was to persuade the United States military to allow black aviation cadets. As an equal rights activist, Coffey lobbied the government for the integration of the Army Air Corps and the Civilian Pilot Training Program. Congress later voted to allow "separate but equal" participation in civilian flight training programs, designating the Coffey School as the facilitator of the African-American program. Brown became the coordinator for the CPTP in Chicago and the Coffey School later provided training for the Tuskegee Airmen. Brown also served the Civil Aeronautics Authority as a coordinator and the Federal Aviation Administration's Women's Advisory Board as a member. She died on July 18, 1992.

Center Market (located at Pennsylvania Avenue and 7th Street, NW) was a hub of activity for the District of Columbia's African American population during the 1800s. Both free and enslaved African Americans bought and sold produce at the market and operated stalls before and after Emancipation. This unknown woman, photographed in 1890, ran her own stall, possibly the one just behind her. [Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division] [Info: Histories of the National Mall] Once the largest commercial market in Washington, Center Market opened in 1801. The original buildings were replaced in 1872 by a building designed by German architect, Adolph Cluss. The market was close to the Washington City Canal, railroads, and streetcar lines. It was demolished in 1931 and is the current site of the National Archives. Vendors sold all manner of goods inside: produce, meat and fish, and staples. Because of its access to transportation, Center Market was able to sell goods that had been grown or produced far away.

Elisa Greenwell was a runaway from the residence of William Edelan of Leonardtown, Maryland in 1859. [Photo: 6th plate ambrotype] sold to the National Museum of African American History and Culture set to open September 2016 in Washington DC., for $37,500. According to a professional genealogical researcher, Elisa (or Eliza) Greenwell was born into slavery in 1830 in Saint Mary's County, Maryland on the William and Elizabeth Greenwell plantation. The date is based on the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules for the State. It is probable that Elisa became a house servant for Elizabeth Greenwell. At some point she was sold to William Edelen of Leonardtown, Maryland along with John and James Greenwell (possibly husband and son). William Edelen was a slaveholder with 45 slaves on his tobacco plantation in 1860. It is believed that Elisa Greenwell became a household servant once again to Ellen Edelen, wife of William. How Elisa came to be photographed in Philadelphia in 1859 is open to speculation. It would be a logical place for her to run, having a large free black population as well as being a thriving Underground Railroad hub. William Edelen was a physician as well as tobacco grower. He might have taken Elisa to Philadelphia, but that is doubtful. It seems more likely that Elisa simply ran away, and was somehow returned to Edelen, because the slave schedule for 1860 shows that she is a servant to Mrs. Edelen. The records show that she ran away again on March 20th,1863 according to the 1867 Slave Statistics. John Greenwell escaped and joined the United States Colored Troops (USCT) a few days later on March 24, 1863. One longs to know the rest of her story, and that imagination factor is a primary reason why a vintage photograph like this comes to realize such an extraordinary auction result. Source: swanngalleries

In her 1890 book, "Poor Ben: A Story of Real Life," based on the life of Benjamin William Arnett, the seventeenth bishop of the AME Church. In the dedication section she wrote: "I dedicate this work with sincere love for my race. To the colored young men and women of America, with the hope that it may contribute something to that Christian knowledge, which is the very breath of all true nobility." ~ The Author Lucretia H. Newman Coleman lived in Appleton, Wisconsin for only a short time, from around 1867 to about 1876. Her family moved to Appleton, from Cincinnati after the death of the family’s patriarch, Baptist Minister and Abolitionist, Reverend William P. Newman in 1866. She entered Lawrence University as a freshman in September, 1872, enrolling in a scientific course and staying for about two years. She was one of the earliest African American students to enroll at Lawrence. Some biographies state she graduated from Lawrence, but the University Archives has no record of her being awarded a degree. Lucretia was born in Dresden, Ontario, Canada around 1854. Her family moved from Canada to the West Indies, then back to Cincinnati and finally to Appleton. She married Robert J. Coleman in Des Moines, Iowa in 1884 and soon moved to Minneapolis where her daughter Roberta was born. Eventually she and Roberta moved to Chicago where her entry in 1920 census listed her occupation as dressmaker. She had a distinguished career as an author in the 1880s and into the 1890s, writing articles published primarily in African American journals such as Our Women and Children and the A.M.E. Review, in addition to a biographical novel and poetry. In The Afro-American Press and Its Editors (1891), Irvine Penn states that her writings were “rich in minute comparisons, philosophic terms, and scientific principles.” Martin Dann writes in The Black Press 1827-1890: The Quest for National Identity (1971) that her poem “Lucille of Montana” (1883) was praised at the time as being “full of ardor, eloquence and noble thought.” A contemporary account in the journal The American Baptist said “As a writer, her fame is spreading, not only in one or two states, but throughout the United States. Should she continue with the same success in the past, she will be equal to Harriet Ward Beecher Stowe, if not her superior.” And in Noted Negro Women, Their Triumphs and Activities (1893), Monroe Alphus Majors writes she contributed to black journals with her “usual fascination for saying things in her own way.” Bio: Neighborhood News (The Newsletter of the Old Third Ward Neighborhood Association, Inc.,) Winter 2016 editors Antoinette Powell and Linda Muldoon.

Photo: E. Azalia Hackley Collection of African Americans in the Performing Arts, Detroit Public Library Florence Mills (1896 - 1927), was never captured on film and her voice was never recorded. Just two of the factors why, with each successive generation, Florence Mills always remains on the verge of being forgotten. Yet, there's something in the collective consciousness of African Americans that refuses to totally forget her. In the 1920's, she was the biggest star, period. She was the first Black woman to appear in the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair. Her voice was high and birdlike. She was a small, petite woman with a winsome, wide-eyed beauty. Known as The Little Blackbird, she was most effervescent on stage with her high-kickin', tireless and high octane performances. Though born in Washington, DC., Harlem was home to Mills. After a grueling, whirlwind tour of England, Mills returned home gravely ill with appendicitis. Her death, a month later at the age of 31, set off an outpouring of love and grief, memory and flowers, affection and music that Harlem had ever seen. Her body lay in state for a week in the chapel of the Howell Undertaking Parlors at 137th & Seventh Avenue, and her funeral at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church attracted an estimated 5000 mourners. Numerous accounts suggest that at least 150,000 people lined the streets outside while hundreds of blackbirds were released by helicopter above. The great Duke Ellington wrote, "Black Beauty" in memory of the great lady.

Harrison County Historical Society Collection, wvculture.org and Bridgeport by Robert F Stealey Sophia "Aunt Sook" Westfall, was born into slavery in the early 1800s. She lived on Simpson Creek near Bridgeport, West Virginia until her death in 1902. She and her daughter, Jane, were bought not long before the War Between the States by George Higinbotham, a rich Simpson Creek farmer. The Higinbotham farm is now the Bridgeport Country Club.

January 1950 advert in Our World featuring the great Sarah Vaughan. Our World Magazine, was published by African American businessman, John Preston Davis (1905 - 1973). It was a full-size, nationally-distributed magazine edited for African American readers. Its first issue, with singer and actress Lena Horne on the cover, arrived on the nation's newsstands in April 1946. Our World was a premier publication for African American men and women covering contemporary topics from black history to sports and entertainment with regular articles on health, fashion, politics and social awareness, was headquartered out of New York City. Our World portrayed Black America as no other national publication had ever done. The magazine had a run of eleven years before folding. [The John P Davis Collection]

Fannie Clay was born in Ripley, Tennessee in 1891, the daughter of former slaves Elen Gilliland Clay and Hugh Clay. In 1910 she graduated from Lauderdale County Training School and relocated to Memphis, Tennessee with her family. She eventually relocated to Chicago, where she studied to become a pharmacist. While working at a drug store to pay for her education she met the man who would become her husband of twenty-one years. Fannie Clay and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson were married January 27, 1922, (she was his 2nd wife). No longer focusing on her career she worked as her husband's secretary and business manager. She's credited as playing a significant role in his success by working behind the scenes. They divorced June 25, 1943 due to his gambling, womanizing, and Fannie’s desire to have him slow down due to his heart condition. When they divorced Fannie is quoted as having said they “agreed to disagree" but remained the best of friends. The couple never had children. In the 2001 movie “Bojangles” Gregory Hines played the lead and Fannie's character was portrayed by Kimberly Elise. Photo: National Vaudeville Artists Fund (1929) Source: blackripley.com

This well dressed African American woman is Lucy Davis. She was an entrepreneur, a land owner, and a sugar beet farmer. She's also the Great Grandmother of legendary actress Pam Grier. [ Photograph was tweeted by Ms. Grier on April 20, 2016]

Dancer Ida Forsyne as "Topsy," with Abbie Mitchell's Tennessee Students in London, England. Ida Forsyne, jazz dancer who was named by poet Langston Hughes as one of the twelve best dancers of all time, was born in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother became a domestic servant when she was two years old, after the disappearance of her father. At the age of ten, she was dancing and singing for small sums of money at the local candy store and house-rent parties, and she cakewalked for twenty-five cents a day at the Chicago World's Fair, traveling through the festival site in a wagon with a ragtime band to drum up trade. Many shows originated in Chicago at the time, and so Forsynes haunted the Alhambra Theater, watching rehearsals of such shows as Coontown 400 and The South before the War. At age fourteen Forsyne ran away with a tab show, The Black Bostonians, in which everyone did their own specialties. She sang "My Hannah Lady" and also performed a Buck Dance in her inimitable eccentric style that includes rhythmic stepping and legomania. The finale of the show was a plantation scene that included the entire cast. When the show broke up in Bute, Montana, Forsyne adopted a five-year-old boy as a "prop" and sang her way back home to Chicago by walking down the aisles of the railroad coaches, hand-in-hand with him, harmonizing "On the Banks of the Wabash" as she passed the child's hat and collected enough money to pay fare and little more. In 1898 the fifteen-year-old joined Sisseretta Jones' Black Patti Troubadours. "A girl in the show was sick, so I went down and did my number, ‘My Hannah Lady,' and got the job at $15 a week," Forsyne told Marshall Stearns. "I was the only young girl in the company of twenty-six. For my specialty, I pushed a baby carriage across the stage and sang a lullaby, ‘You're Just a Little Nigger but You're Mine All Mine,' and no one thought of objecting in those day." The show had a cakewalking contest at every performance and Forsyne and partner won it seven nights straight in a row by adding legomania and tumbling in the breaks. Forsyne had the ability to perform any step she saw. In 1899, on her sixteenth birthday, Forsyne and the Black Patti troupe arrived in San Francisco, and remembers that they stayed at a fine white hotel and ate together at a long table, and that "everyone was so nice to us." Returning to New York, she easily got jobs working in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Coney Island, working in minstrel-styled shows such as Henderson's Big Theater (at Coney Island) with famous acts like Eddie Cantor. It was at Coney Island that Forsyne lost her voice in an "all song-and-dance" format in which performers would sing a verse of the song, then a chorus, and then dance a chorus. "I was like a coon shouter until my voice gave out," she said about her voice which was in a strong alto-range. She thereafter learned how to put a song across by "sort of talking it." In 1902, Forsyne joined the original Smart Set, an all- colored show by the white producer Gus Hill and featuring Ernest Hogan, Billy McClain, and the Hun Brothers, and in which she talked the song, "Moana" and performed a solo jazz dance. She then joined Will Marion Cook's The Southerners on the New York Roof Garden, with a mixed cast of thirty-five performers. In 1905 she went abroad with The Tennessee Students, a troupe of seventeen performers (including Abbie Mitchell, comedy dancer Ernest Hogan, and sand dancer Henry Williams), many of whom played stringed instruments and sang in a transitional style between ragtime and jazz. When the show opened at the Palace Theater in London in 1906, Forsyne (her picture on the front cover of the program) was the billing star, singing "Topsy, the Famous Negro Dancer." With her radiating personality and facial expression, she was immediately noticed. Wrote the Daily Telegraph: "If Topsy is not soon the talk of the town we are very much mistaken." For the succeeding nine years. Forsyne toured Europe under the management of the Marinelli Agency, the largest in Europe, in what would be the peak of her career. The entire first year she played the Moulin Rouge in Paris, singing and dancing her fast mixture of eccentric steps. She was then booked throughout England where for the first time she saw Bill Robinson and Ralph Cooper. At the Alhambra Theatre in London, she introduced her Sack dance to special music with a ballet company. A stagehand carried her onstage in a big potato sack; she threw one leg out, then an arm, and so on until, dumped in the middle of the stage, she danced before a backup chorus line of ballet dancers who were paid extra to appear in blackface. While the performance was considered "arty," Forsyne was improvising jazz steps. She quickly rose to such fame that she gave a command performance for the Royal family. In 1911, in the middle of her Moscow dance program, tiny Forsyne (she wore a size two shoe) suddenly inserted a series of improvised kazotsky kicks into her routine and brought the house down; she was immediately hailed as the "greatest Russian dancer of then all." She thereafter closed her act with kazotsky kicks-- which began from a squat, arms folded at the chest, and legs kicking out, first one leg and then another. Though Russian dancers usually stood up between steps, Forsyne could not wait. She changed steps and traveled across the stage in a crouch, working out new combinations. She flung both legs out in front of her and touched her toes with her hands before coming down in time with the music. She also mixed down-steps with up-steps, and cross-ankle steps, and as a finale, would kazotsky all the way across the stage, and return backwards. European theaters booked Forsyne for nine years without a break. Forsyne popularized Russian dancing in the United States, after pioneering that style abroad. But she was, above and beyond, a jazz dancer. She remembered many early jazz tap steps, among them "Going to the World's Fair," which was strut in which one put both feet together and moved forward on the toes. Another step was "Scratchin' the Gravel," or the "Sooey," a short sliding motion alternately on each foot; Forsyne described it as a two-step with a dip. In 1914, Forsyne returned to New York from touring abroad and performed at the Lincoln and Lafayette theaters. High class society people went to the Lafayette and the management didn't present of-color blues singers, comedians and Shake dancers from T.O.B.A., as did at the Lincoln." In 1916, Forsyne saw Darktown Follies and remembers that it was the talk of the town. "Eddie Retor was featured in his smooth military routine, and Toots Davis was doing his Over the Top and Through the Trenches, and they were new steps then," she told Marshall Stearns. For two years (from 1920 to 1922), Forsyne worked as a personal maid, onstage and off, to Sophie Tucker, earning $50 a week. Onstage, Tucker sang thirteen songs, accompanied by pianist Al Seeger, and wanted a dancer to help whip up applause at the end of the show—and Forsyne filled that position. The act broke up in Washington, D.C. where, on the Keith circuit, new rules disallowed black performers to appear onstage with a white performer unless they wore blackface. Furthermore, no performer of color working backstage was permitted to watch the show. Tucker refused to have Forsyne don blackface, and while Forsyne was banned from the show, she was permitted to watch the show from the wings. By 1924, Forsyne was back on the T.O.B.A. black vaudeville circuit as one of six dancing girls with blues singer Mamie Smith's act. After touring the South with the late version of The Smart Set, Forsyne returned to New York where Harlem nightclubs were thriving. Refused after auditioning at the Cotton Club, Connie's Inn, and the Nest, because of the preference for light-skinned and scantily-clad chorus girls, Forsyne was promised a job at Small's Paradise, which never panned out. As did a job working at the New World Club in Atlantic City in 1927, which was recommended to her by Jack "Legs" Diamond. Forsyne was apparently rejected for not approving of the abbreviated costumes which were de rigeur for female jazz dancers. Back on T.O.B.A., Forsyne earned $35 a week working with Bessie Smith, a show that allowed her to reprise her Russian specialty. She left Smith's company in 1928, vowing she would never tour the South again. After working three-and-a-half years as a domestic, and then as an elevator girl, Forsyne quit dancing. In 1963, however, she played the part of Mrs. Noah in Green Pastures. That same year, she appeared with Rex Ingraham in The Emperor Jones. As late as 1951, Forsyne assisted Ruthanna Boris for the choreography for the New York City Ballet's "The Cakewalk," choreographed by George Balanchine. In 1962, at the age of seventy-nine, Forsyne could still perform a cartwheel. She devoted most of her spare time to visiting various hospitals where she entertained and cheered up sick friends. By 1966 she herself retired to the Concord Baptist Nursing Home in Brooklyn, where she died in 1983, at the age of 100. Sources: Marshall and Jean Stearns, Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance (1968); Cary D. Wintz and Paul Finkelman, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Vol I. (2004); Blacks in Blackface: A Sourcebook on Early Black Musical Shows (Vol 1, 2nd ed.) by Henry T Sampson