This work by Mikki Kendall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Happy 80th Birthday Nichelle Nichols! Ms. Nichols was born on December 28, 1932 in Robbins, IL and in this 1961 photo, Ms. Nichols rehearses a dance number with some of the cast from “Kicks and Co.,” a 1961 musical satire about segregation that was directed at one point by Lorraine Hansberry and produced by her husband). Although the show had major financial backing, an “all-star interracial cast” (Burgess Meredith, Lonnie Sattin, Vi Velasco) and success in Chicago, it never made it to Broadway as planned. Photo via The New York Public Library.
Found via The Washington Post’s obituary for dance legend Jeni LeGon - Ms. LeGon with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson from the 1935 film “Hooray for Love.” Photo: American Tap Dance Foundation Archives.
Sarah Vaughan in New York City, 1948. Photo: Herman Leonard via the Morrison Hotel Gallery.
Josephine Baker surrounded by admirers at the Olympia theater in Paris in the 1940s surrounded by admirers. Her husband, Jo Bouillon and the French singer and actor, Georges Guetary are at her side. Photo: Maurice Zalewski, Gamma-Rapho/Getty.
Holy shit that hair piece situation
Happy Veterans Day! Thank you to each and every veteran who reads this page and gratitude to those who served who are no longer with us. In this photo, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Harriet Ida Pickens (left) and Ensign Frances Wills, the Navy’
s first African-American “WAVES” officers, are shown after graduating from the Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School (WR) at Northampton, Massachusetts, in December 1944. Photo: Official U.S. Navy Photograph, National Archives.
I am a bit obsessed with this awesome picture. It’s Hilda Simms, Langston Hughes (bottom right) and actor Canada Lee (center in white shirt) at a party with other artists around 1944. I recognize the women on the left - but I am drawing a blank on their names so, if you know, please let me know in the comment section. Photo by George Karger/Pix Inc./Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
Two sailors from the the USS Mason (DE-529), the first US Navy ship to have a predominantly African-American crew on March 20, 1944. Photo: Corbis
Princess Elizabeth of Toro, the Cambridge-educated attorney and former foreign minister from Uganda in her modeling days in February 1974. During her modeling career, she appeared in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar among other high profile publications. But, her political career was far more interesting. Photo: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis.
43-year-old Josephine Baker is being served prosciutto & melon in Venice in 1949. Today (October 25) is my 43rd birthday and to celebrate, I thought I would post photos of some of my favorite VBG legends at the age of 43. Sadly, too many did not make it to 43 (Dorothy Dandridge, Dinah Washington, Diana Sands, Lorraine Hansberry) but many did and did it well. Photo by Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche/Getty Images.
Bill and Camille Cosby arriving for the Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on September 12, 1965. Photo: Bettman/Corbis.
