The Iconic, Controversial Sidney Poitier: A Tribute for Black History Month

By David Haberstich

Actor Sir Sidney Poitier, Feb. 3, 1977, photograph probably by Robert Scurlock. Gelatin silver acetate  negative, Scurlock Studio Records,Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Above is a photograph from the National Museum of American History Archives Center’s Scurlock Studio Records, probably taken by Robert Scurlock, showing famed actor Sidney Poitier besieged by young fans seeking autographs. More than any other African American actor, Poitier (who died in January this year) helped to integrate Hollywood. I first saw him many years ago in his 1955 film, Blackboard Jungle, and recall his magnetic performance vividly. I viewed it again recently, perhaps finding fault with the screenplay, but no less awed by Poitier. He played an unruly teenager who comes to his white teacher’s aid during a deadly classroom brawl at the climax of the film.

Poster for "Lilies of the Field." Copyright © 1963 by United Artists. Scan via Heritage Auctions. Cropped from original image. Public Domain,

He was the first African American to win a “best actor” Academy Award for his performance in Lilies of the Field (1967). Despite the acclaim he received, he was not universally admired by African Americans. The Black critic and playwright Clifford Mason famously denounced him as “dishonest” in a New York Times article, “Why Does White America Love Sidney Poitier So?” (Sept. 10, 1967):  “I submit that the Negro (or black, if you will), image was subverted in these films much more so than it was in the two films he seems worried about.” Playing Porgy in Porgy and Bess was one of the roles that concerned Poitier, supposedly accepting it against his better judgment as the price for being allowed to play such roles as the heroic Virgil Tibbs in In the Heat of the Night. What Mason liked about the Porgy character was that “at least we have a man, a real man, fighting [for] his woman and willing to follow her into the great unknown, the big city, poor boy from Catfish Row that he is.”

        “But he remains unreal,” Mason continued, “as he has for nearly two decades, playing essentially the same role, the antiseptic, one-dimensional hero.” The critic was disappointed that the Virgil Tibbs character had no apparent love interest to certify him as a “real” man. Furthermore, he minimized the significance of the famous slap which Tibbs gives a white bigot, complaining that it occurs only after the bigot slaps Tibbs first. Perhaps Mason had not yet heard Poitier declare that he had insisted that his character should respond with a retaliatory slap, refusing to continue without it. I found the scene riveting, not only for Tibbs’s sudden explosion of righteous pent-up anger, but for the expression of startled, befuddled disbelief on the face of the racist sheriff, played by Rod Steiger. At first I thought the tears and sniveling of the white “aristocrat” in the aftermath of the slap were overdone, but later decided his reaction was perfect symbolism. For the first time, these figures of white oppression were beginning to realize that their comfortable world might be crumbling.

Apart from Poitier’s acceptance of film roles that Mason and others found troubling, the actor’s life was a rags-to-riches story that I find inspiring. First, he nearly succumbed to a premature birth while his parents were working in Miami, Florida. As a barely literate Black teenager from Cat Island in the Bahamas, he suffered racist indignities in the Jim Crow South of Miami, then moved to a slightly more congenial New York City, where he toiled as a dishwasher while seeking a better job. He tried to join the American Negro Theatre, initially failing in humiliation due to his shaky reading skills. With timely coaching from a friend, he quickly solved this problem, then embarked on a personal campaign to suppress his Bahamian accent and hone his acting skills. Eventually he acted on Broadway, then found his niche in film, especially with his break-through role in Blackboard Jungle. His subsequent roles explored many aspects of the Black man in white society. His prominence in Hollywood echoed aspects of the real-life civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century, not only through the impact of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? on the previously taboo topic of interracial marriage. Moreover, he was an active participant in the civil rights struggle, risking arrest or worse by helping to deliver $70,000 to Freedom Summer volunteers in 1964.

Poitier’s achievements beyond acting are extensive, including directing films and publishing memoirs and a novel. He was also a diplomat, serving as Bahamian ambassador to Japan (1997-2007) and concurrently to UNESCO (2002-2007). He was even granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth in 1974. In 2009 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama. Perhaps his most satisfying honor was the acknowledgment by younger Black actors that he had broken ground and opened doors for them. Denzel Washington gratefully cited Poitier’s contributions while presenting him with the Honorary Academy Award in 2002. His remarks were followed by sustained, enthusiastic applause from the audience.

        Broadway theaters dimmed their lights in honor of Sir Sidney Poitier on January 19, 2022.

David Haberstich, Curator of Photography

Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Scurlock Photographs, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the NMAH Archives Center, Part 2

By David Haberstich 

The previous post described Robert Scurlock's unsuccessful attempts to publish or exhibit photographs by his father, Addison N. Scurlock, and the Scurlock Studio. This happy ending of the story is offered as an extension of  Black History Month into the first few days of March.

Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. Negative by Addison N. Scurlock, 1943.
Later print by Robert S. Scurlock. 14" x 11". Scurlock Studio Records, NMAH Archives Center.

Harry Lunn, the Corcoran Exhibition, and Jackie Onassis

Robert finally found an advocate in Harry H. Lunn, Jr., the charismatic and successful dealer of photographic art based in Washington. Lunn’s gallery, which flourished in several locations, was the premier gallery at a time when there were several other art dealers in Washington who sold photographs exclusively, riding the crest of the first few years of the new photography boom, which I date from 1967. Many historians credit Lunn as the single most important force in establishing photography as a collectible commodity as well as a serious field of academic study. Lunn, Kathleen Ewing, Marie Martin, Jo Tartt, and the Washington Gallery of Photography, operated by Byron and Mary Schumaker, were among the dealers who regularly exhibited and sold “vintage” and contemporary photography, at steadily increasing prices.  It was Lunn’s business acumen which finally helped to make Ansel Adams rich after decades of work as America’s best-known landscape photographer. At some point Robert Scurlock apparently approached Lunn, probably hoping the dealer would help to sell Scurlock photographs. I have found no evidence that Lunn ever sold or exhibited Scurlock photographs, but he encouraged and advised Robert in his quest for recognition. This was especially important for Robert, who was enmeshed in the world of commercial photography and apparently was unaware of the parallel world of contemporary photographic art, which was making gigantic inroads among art collectors and scholars and into museum collections. Despite Robert’s early interest in expanding his horizons beyond the studio-based, insular field of portrait and commercial photography by working as a photojournalist, he was a novice in approaching the new “art” photography and its norms, customs, and cast of influential characters. He wrote two letters on May 13, 1975, in which he noted that Lunn had suggested contacts. He wrote to Douglas Morgan of Morgan & Morgan, a well-known publisher of art photography books and technical texts. Apparently nothing came of this effort, although he met Morgan at a photographic conference and they discussed his proposal, as verified in his letter of September 30, 1975. His letter to Roy Slade, director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, however, finally bore fruit within a remarkably short period. He noted that Lunn had specifically suggested that an exhibition of Addison Scurlock’s work, especially his portraits of notable African Americans, could supplement an existing Bicentennial theme, already established by the Corcoran.   

Mid-Winter Assembly [of the NAACP], Baltimore, Maryland, 1912.
In the Corcoran exhibition and catalog, Robert Scurlock misidentified this photograph as "Formal Dance at Whitelaw Hotel, ca, 1923." Robert made a new 16" x 20" print for the exhibition from the original 8" x 10" glass plate negative. Scurlock Studio Records, NMAH Archives Center. 

With Slade’s blessing and enthusiastic support from the Corcoran’s chief curator, Jane Livingston (who was already especially interested in Black artists), and photography curator Frances Fralin, Robert arranged for an exhibition of his father’s photographs to begin in June 1976, as part of a series of “American Bicentennial” exhibitions sponsored by the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The Gallery previously had commissioned new work by eight noted (white) photographic artists of diverse styles as a Bicentennial theme. Apparently Lunn convinced the Corcoran curators to host an exhibition of Addison Scurlock’s photographs as an historical counterweight or adjunct to the new commissioned work. The actual arrangements seemed a little unusual, perhaps due to a tight schedule, with Robert himself ordering the printing of the catalog by Colortone Creative Printing on March 17, 1976. Fifteen “vintage” prints by Addison’s hand were the core of the exhibition, while Robert made more than one hundred new prints from his father’s negatives.

Robert now renewed his efforts to get a full-fledged book published in connection with the exhibition, and on March 3, 1976, wrote to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis at Viking Press in hopes that she would help her mentor from years ago. One of the Scurlock family’s favorite anecdotes concerns Jacqueline Bouvier’s short-term study at the Capitol School of Photography, which Robert and George managed out of the studio from 1948 to 1952. Citing her brief tenure as a student at the school, he wrote:

“Dear Mrs. Onassis,

“[It’s] been a long time but I presume you remember your former teacher of photography. (Jackie Bouvier – Times Herald days) Like many, I’ve followed your career very closely, and [it’s] nice to know that you are back in America and working for Viking Press. I would like to outline a coming event that is very important to me, and if possible, enlist your aid.

“This summer, The Corcoran Gallery will open an exhibit of 125 or so of my father’s photographs. He was a very skillful Camera Artist and probably the most important Black Photographer in the country. This will be a memorial exhibit and will include his portrait studies of people like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois [sic], Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Mary Bethune, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen and many others.

“Publishing a photographic book of this material is one of my objectives, and in discussing the plans with Jane Livingston, Curator of the Corcoran, the thought occurred that just possibly Viking might be in a position to publish a catalog for us. We realize that time is very short since the exhibition is due for opening in mid-June, however it will be up most of the summer.”

I love the line, “Like many, I’ve followed your career very closely…” We don’t know how Jacqueline Onassis reacted to it—if she saw it. It might have provided a chuckle or two. This request for a major publisher to produce an exhibition catalogue or monograph on only a few months’ notice was unrealistic—even as a personal favor. An assistant at Viking Press wrote Robert to advise that scheduling a book to coincide with the exhibition was impossible. However, there was indeed a modest booklet produced by the Corcoran, basically an illustrated checklist with introductory text (by the reliable Michael Winston), almost identical in format to the publications which accompanied the exhibitions of the eight (white) photographers from whom new work had been commissioned, and identifying the Scurlock exhibition as a component of the Corcoran’s Bicentennial series, “The Nation’s Capital in Photographs, 1976.” Ironically, a copy of this free booklet was recently advertised online at a price of nearly one thousand dollars.

Adopting a more modest goal, on June 21, 1976, Robert wrote to the editor of Studio Light, a Kodak publication, suggesting a story on the exhibition. On July 15 he sent a copy of the 24-page catalog to Cassie Furgurson at Time magazine, requesting a story. On July 26 he wrote to inform African American Congressman Charles Rangel about the exhibition, seeking assistance for publicity. Unfortunately, these efforts did not pay off. 

However, there were gratifying outside contributions toward the exhibition. Robert wrote to the Independence Federal Savings & Loan Association on July 28 to thank “Mr. Fitzgerald” for “financial support given to the Corcoran gallery” in mounting the exhibition. The exhibition included a variety of subjects, but concentrated on portraits of African American leaders of international, national, and local renown. It even included several of his photographs of Black entertainers wearing blackface (represented in the catalog), which apparently were not considered controversial at the time.

Picnic Group, Highland Beach, Md. Original negative by Addison N. Scurlock, ca. 1931-1932.
New print for Corcoran exhibition by Robert S. Scurlock, ca. 1976.
Scurlock Studio Records, NMAH Archives Center.

One of the most influential and well-known American curators of photography saw the exhibition and expressed interest in acquiring Addison’s work for her museum. On September 24, Robert wrote to Anne Tucker at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, offering to sell her prints at $150.00 each, and suggesting the possibility of showing the exhibition in Houston. Although the show did not travel to Houston, Tucker was among the new wave of eager young photography curators to be hired by major art museums, so the subsequent sale represented a coup for Robert.  

Jane Livingston and Frances Fralin, as well as later dedicated Corcoran photography curators, demonstrated their continuing interest in Black photographers through many other exhibitions and acquisitions. For example, just a year after the Scurlock show, the Corcoran sponsored “Black Photographers in America” from July 30-Aug. 31, 1977. While the Smithsonian Institution was arguably the first American museum to collect and exhibit photographs as works of art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s photography exhibitions date from the early twentieth century, and the museum maintained a vigorous, internationally known photography exhibition and acquisitions program until the Corcoran’s sad demise in 2014, its collections eventually dispersed to other museums. After teaching the history of photography in the Corcoran College of Art for two years, with friends among Corcoran teachers and curators, I was deeply disappointed by that unfortunate turn of events. We can’t blame a pandemic for the permanent closing of that illustrious museum. There is some solace in knowing that the Corcoran’s ground-breaking exhibition of Addison Scurlock’s work ultimately became a component of the Archives Center’s Scurlock collection. Kudos to Jane Livingston and the late Frances Fralin and Harry Lunn for their foresight and dedication in helping to bring Addison Scurlock, a major Black photographer and chronicler of Washington’s African American history, to the attention of photographic historians and the general public.

David Haberstich, Curator of Photography, Archives Center

National Museum of American History

 
 

 

Scurlock Photographs, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the NMAH Archives Center, Part 1

By David Haberstich

Every February when I think of Black History Month, I naturally think about one of the Archives Center’s premier collections, the Scurlock Studio Records. This collection contains the life’s work of the principals of this Black-owned Washington photography studio, founder Addison N. Scurlock (1883-1964) and his sons Robert (1916-1994) and George (1919-2005). In February 2020 I gave a brief lecture about the collection at a Black History Month social event sponsored by a large Washington law firm, at the invitation of a Scurlock relative on the firm’s staff. Little did I know that it would turn out to be my last in-person lecture (and social event) before COVID-19 closed the Smithsonian and disrupted my social life, along with nearly everyone else’s.

In my talk about Scurlock photographs, I thanked my hosts for the invitation to their lovely party, but mused about another important party that I had missed in 1976, the first year in which Black History Month was observed officially, as recognized by President Gerald Ford. Had I attended that earlier event, an exhibition opening at Washington’s Corcoran Gallery of Art, I could have met Robert Scurlock, as well as the famed African-American New York photographer, James Van Der Zee. (Some call Addison Scurlock Washington’s Van Der Zee, but I like to call Van Der Zee New York’s Scurlock.) I met Mr. Van Der Zee on a later occasion, but unfortunately I never met Robert. I came to know his younger brother George quite well, however, along with other Scurlock relatives.

Typical Scurlock Studio banquet photograph, dinner for Armond W. Scott, 1935.
Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

The Corcoran exhibition, entitled “The Historic Photographs of Addison N. Scurlock,” ran from June 19 to Aug. 29, 1976. When the National Museum of American History acquired the Scurlock collection almost twenty years later, the entire Corcoran exhibition, having been returned to the studio, was part of the archive. These photographs, conveniently still framed for subsequent displays, were shown in several small exhibitions in the National Museum of American History over the years, as well as in Deborah Willis’s major exhibition in the Arts and Industries Building, “Visual Journal: Harlem and D.C. in the Thirties and Forties,” in 1996. Correspondence in the business records of the Scurlock Studio Records reveal the story behind the historic Corcoran exhibition of 1976.

A Quest for Recognition 

Addison Scurlock sold the business to his sons before his death in 1964. In the early 1970s Robert became concerned about the future of the Scurlock family business and its photographic archive. As he began to confront his own mortality, his brother George’s intention to retire, and the fact that there were no family members to carry on the Scurlock business, it seemed likely that the Scurlock Studio and its later iteration as CustomCraft might die with him. Robert had no children, and brother George’s children had evinced little interest in operating the studio enterprise. Years earlier, Robert had rebuffed the efforts of two young relatives to gain employment at the studio on the grounds that they “hadn’t paid their dues” as photographers. 

Left to right: George, Addison, and Robert Scurlock in their studio, ca. 1948.
Scurlock Studio Records, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Furthermore, he recognized the classic, enduring quality of his father’s early work, in contrast with his own bread-and-butter portraiture and photojournalism, and was determined to find ways to revive and increase public awareness of Addison’s pioneering photographs. Robert’s eventual success in this quest was preceded by a flurry of activity and disappointing failures. Correspondence in the business papers of the Scurlock Studio Records documents his unsuccessful, frustrating attempts to highlight his father’s work through publications, especially a book reproducing Addison’s finest, most iconic photographs, but ultimately he managed to realize his dream of a major exhibition to honor his father’s work.

Attempting to find a publisher for the book he envisioned, Robert submitted pictures to Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. An acknowledgment from Alison M. Bond (August 4, 1970) indicated that she would consider the project, and agreed to contact famed African American photographer Gordon Parks, whom Robert had asked to write a foreword for the proposed monograph. He also suggested that Michael Winston of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center could write the text. He telephoned Art Editor Marlayna Franklin in March 1970, as indicated in her letter of April 1. There ensued a bustle of correspondence with Holt, Rinehart and Winston about the project, some of it suggesting that Robert had been erratic in following up on their contacts. Later Paul Anbinder, Executive Editor at Harry N. Abrams, Inc., mentioned Robert’s May 1970 telephone conversation about a book proposal in his letter of May 27, 1970.  On June 9, 1970, however, Anbinder wrote that “the project does not seem suitable” for the Abrams “program.” Alison M. Bond sent Robert a final rejection letter on December 18, 1970, returning the photographs and asserting that the proposed book would be too expensive to produce and that it “could well price itself out of the market.”

While Robert pursued his dream of a coffee-table monograph on his father, he also attempted to interest periodicals in publishing illustrated articles devoted to Addison’s work and/or his own. He contacted an English publication, Telegraph Magazine, on July 13, 1970, suggesting an article on Washington based on his own color transparencies, but editor John Ashby responded that they weren’t quite what he was seeking, while leaving the door open for further submissions (July 24, 1970).  Fred Schmidt, managing editor of The Professional Photographer, indicated that he was interested in doing an article on the CustomCraft business (June 17, 1971), but this did not materialize either.  

Further attempts to interest publishers in a book or articles similarly failed. To be fair, Robert’s letters to publishers were relatively weak inquiries, rather than detailed proposals, and they indicate his naivete about the book publishing business. In these files we can sense his growing frustration over what appeared to be an endangered legacy. Eventually he modified his strategy and included the book concept as a corollary to a more ambitious and potentially risky idea—a gallery in which to display his father’s photographs. The business files contain Robert’s twelve-page typescript entitled “Proposal for Establishment of the Scurlock Gallery of Photography.” In this stronger proposal, complete with a budget, he revealed another element of his aspirations—to honor his father Addison through a permanent exhibition of his work. Although the proposal is undated, it clearly was prepared in the early 1970s, after the establishment of the D.C. Commission on Bicentennial Programs.  Robert wrote: 

“Establishment of the gallery on the site of Mr. Scurlock’s first studio, 900 You [sic] Street, Northwest, would be a positive achievement in the inner city, making a definite contribution to the community, and increasing the opportunity for citizen appreciation of Black progress, past and present.  The gallery would operate on a non-profit basis with free admission to the general public.”

He further proposed that a satellite gallery be established at the same location to show the work of promising Black photographers from around the world; that a “Special Centennial [i.e., Bicentennial] Exhibition” be assembled at the National Portrait Gallery to honor eminent “Black Americans”; that associated traveling exhibitions, educational reproductions, filmstrips, and slide shows be prepared and distributed through educational channels; that a major publisher be sought to produce a “top quality” photography book for the 1976 Bicentennial; and that a special gallery be established for talented Black youths who wish to enter the field of photography, under his direction, with scholastic aid to be solicited from corporate America and major foundations. His proposed first-year budget for $78,400 included salaries for a director (himself), assistant director, and gallery assistant.

Although Robert used the word “Centennial” several times in his proposal, he clearly meant “Bicentennial,” as he was applying for 50% matching funds from the D.C. Commission on Bicentennial Programs. The funding request was denied. No evidence was presented to indicate that the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery was interested in an exhibition hailing the achievements of noted African Americans. Robert had connections with officials at the Gallery through his contract to photograph collection objects, such as paintings, but it isn’t clear if any discussions related to this idea occurred before he approached Marvin Sadik, then director of the National Portrait Gallery, to propose an exhibition of Addison’s portraits of important African American subjects, presumably as a Bicentennial project. In Sadik’s letter of May 12, 1975, the concept was turned down. Sadik wrote that he and his staff decided that “there simply are not enough photographs by your father of nationally noted personalities to make a viable exhibition.” This short-sighted judgment surely disappointed and rankled Robert on several different levels, as he undoubtedly felt that such an exhibition was sorely needed, not only to honor the photographer, but precisely to give recognition to the subjects and help make them “nationally noted.” It must have been a bitter pill to swallow. 

(To Be Continued)

David Haberstich, Curator of Photography, Archives Center

National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution

Connecting Black History through Transcription

Robert Russa Moton (1867-1940) graduated from Hampton National and Agricultural Institute (now University) in  1890. He served as the school's commandant of cadets from 1891-1915 before becoming the second president of Tuskegee Institute (now University). Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution, gift of Thurlow E. Tibbs, Jr., Estate.

In recognition of Black History Month, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Anacostia Community Museum  are collaborating to discover hidden connections across their respective collections. To start off the month NMAAHC and ACM highlight collections relating to African American education history.

After the Civil War, many of the first colleges for African Americans were established to provide training for teachers and future leaders. Now known as HBCUs (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), these schools educated some of the most famous African Americans of the twentieth century including Booker T. Washington (Hampton University), W.E.B. Du Bois (Fisk University), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Morehouse College), Ralph Abernathy (Alabama State University), Thurgood Marshall (Lincoln University), Katherine Johnson, (West Virginia State University), Marian Wright Edelman (Spelman College), and Oprah Winfrey (Tennessee State University).

One of the earliest HBCUs was Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute (now Hampton University) was founded in 1868 by General Samuel Chapman Armstrong with the support of the American Missionary Association. In its early days, Hampton trained African American educators. The school also emphasized self-improvement and job training to enable students to become gainfully employed and self-supporting as craftsmen and industrial workers. Listed in Hampton Classes 1871-1898 are the names of the graduates of Hampton Institute between 1871 and 1898. Included in this reference book are two of Hampton’s most famous alumni: Booker T. Washington (founder of Tuskegee Institute) and Robert Sengstacke Abbott (founder of the Chicago Defender). Help us transcribe this document and let us know if  you find other famous alumni on these pages?

We invite the public to transcribe letters, catalogues, playbills, scrapbooks and programs on the Smithsonian Digital Volunteers: Transcription Center to help us become aware of people, places, and events buried within these documents.

Jennifer Morris, Anacostia Community Museum
Courtney Bellizzi, National Museum of African American History and Culture
Douglas Remley, National Museum of African American History and Culture