DONYALE LUNA | VINTAGE BLACK GLAMOUR & GRACE

Donyale Luna became the first black model in the world to appear on the cover of a major fashion magazine…..the  March 1966 British issue of Vogue. It took another eight years for the magazine’s American counterpart to do the same…..Beverly Johnson in 1974.

With her exotic looks, Donyale quickly rose to fame in the modeling world with Harper’s Bazaar featuring a sketch of her on the cover of its January 1965 issue, in addition to a six-page feature of Luna that caused advertisers in the south to pull advertising, with some readers actually canceling their subscription.

Beauty and the Beach | 1940s

Black History Album: The Way We Were. 100 Years of African American Vintage Photography from the end of slavery in the 1860′s to the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and beyond.  Pinterest | Tumblr | Twitter | Facebook.

PAM GRIER & RICHARD PRIOR | VINTAGE BLACK GLAMOUR & GRACE
- 1977

Black History Album: The Way We Were. 100 Years of African American Vintage Photography from the end of slavery in the 1860′s to the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and beyond.  Pinterest | Tumblr | Twitter | Facebook.

BEACH BEAUTY | 1955    [Click Image To Enlarge]

Unidentified African American woman in bathing suite

Black History Album: The Way We Were. 100 Years of African American Vintage Photography from the end of slavery in the 1860′s to the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and beyond.  Pinterest | Tumblr | Twitter | Facebook.

WOMAN WITH CIGAR | 1940′S

Katherine Dunham in an undated photograph as Woman with a Cigar from Tropics. Alfredo Valenti, photographer. Credit: Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

Often referred to as “ the matriarch and queen mother of black dance, “ Katherine Mary Dunham (1909 – 2006) ran the Dunham Dance Company, the only self-supported American black dance troupe at that time, for over 30 years. During that span of time, she choreographed more than ninety individual dances.

Check out Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities (LINK) for additional information.

In the late 1800s, Robert Lloyd Smith, an advocate of Booker T. Washington’s  philosophy of education and economic improvement for African-Americans, founded the Farmers’ Home Improvement Society (F.I.S.C.) to help tenant farmers out of a cycle of debt and poverty in Colorado County, Texas. 

The Society provided life insurance, financed a bank in Waco, operated an agricultural boarding school, and provided a social life in a religious and fraternal setting for African-Americans across Texas

BEAM ME UP, SCOTTY | 1960′S

Nichelle Nichols (born Grace Dell Nichols; December 28, 1932) sang with Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton before turning to acting. Her most famous role is that of communications officer Lieutenant Uhura aboard the USS Enterprise in the popular Star Trek television series (1966–1969), as well as the succeeding motion pictures, where her character was eventually promoted in Star Fleet to the rank of commander.

Nichols’ Star Trek character, one of the first African American female characters on American television not portrayed as a servant, was groundbreaking in U.S. society at the time. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. personally praised her work on the show and asked her to remain when she considered leaving the series.

Black History Album: The Way We Were. 100 Years of African American Vintage Photography from the end of slavery in the 1860′s to the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and beyond.  Pinterest | Tumblr | Twitter | Facebook.

AMERICAN GLADIATOR | 1908

John Arthur “Jack” Johnson (1878 – 1946), nicknamed the Galveston Giant, became at the height of the Jim Crow era the first African American world heavyweight boxing champion (1908–1915).

Johnson was faced with much controversy when he was charged with violating the Mann Act in 1912 for taking his white mistress across state lines. In a documentary about his life, Ken Burns notes that “for more than thirteen years, Jack Johnson was the most famous and the most notorious African-American on Earth”

Black History Album: The Way We Were. 100 Years of African American Vintage Photography from the end of slavery in the 1860′s to the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and beyond.  Pinterest | Tumblr | Twitter | Facebook.