|
Scattered Treasures
Losing the Legacy of Photographer Nestor Hernandez,
Jr.
By Donna M. Wells
About two weeks
ago, it was brought to the attention of the local
African American photography community that the
photographs, negatives, portfolios, camera equipment,
and photography books belonging to Nestor Hernandez, Jr.
were being sold by two vendors at the 6th street and
Florida Avenue flea market. Nestor was a locally based
award winning documentary photographer who died in 2006
at the age of 45.
Although he is
recognized for his work as the official photographer for
the Children’s Museum and for DC Public Schools, he is
best known among his peers for his extensive body of
work documenting the people and culture of persons of
African descent. During the last years of his life, he
devoted his time to cultural exchange ventures which
linked like-minded photographers from around the world.
Between 1978 and
2003, he made eighteen trips to Cuba, initially making
personal connections with his Cuban family. For his
last three trips, he invited American photographers to
accompany him to meet and discuss photography with Cuban
photographers which resulted in two comprehensive
exhibits both in Cuba and in Washington, DC.
Nestor’s photo
prints were being sold for an appalling $3.00 each at
the market. Working with members of a local photography
association, we learned that Nestor’s father had placed
his son’s collection in a self-storage unit at a
commercial facility after Nestor died in 2006. The
father never told the rest of the family and when he
himself died unexpectedly a year later, the bill for the
storage unit remained unpaid until it was auctioned off
recently. The family is devastated by the loss and this
echoes what has happened around the country with family
collections, like the Malcolm X Papers and the
photographs of Teenie “One Shot” Harris, for example.
The photography
community is equally devastated by the loss and by the
way Nestor’s legacy is being scattered to the winds.
The vendors informed us that everything had already been
sold although they were previously apprised of the
situation and were made an offer to purchase everything
that was left. An arts attorney said that nothing could
be done about the prints since the storage bin sale was
legitimate. However, the creative rights to print from
the negatives remains with the family regardless of the
fact that the vendors claim they don’t know who they
sold them to.
The bigger picture
is that we need to be more aggressive in protecting
family collections, not just in the preservation sense,
but in the security of our belongings. The current
economic conditions have forced many families to lose
their homes and family papers and other treasures are
being left behind or lost in the process. At the same
time, venues such as eBay and the Antique
Roadshow encourage many of us to see dollar signs on
items hanging on the walls and gracing the shelves of
our homes. As guardians of family collections, or as a
business person like Nestor, we need to be diligent
about informing a trusted family member about the
business and about the location and disposal of family
collections. In this high tech environment, this also
includes keeping track of and sharing with family
members the passwords to e-mail accounts, on-line
business services, and website domains.
* *
* * *
Archival Forum
The Historical Society of Washington, DC
801 K Street, NW / Washington, DC 20001
October 15th,
6:30 pm to 8:30 pm
The Historical
Society of Washington, DC, the Exposure Group African
American Photographers Association, and the Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center at Howard University are hosting a forum
to address this issue on October 15th, 6:30
pm to 8:30 pm at the Historical Society. The situation
will be discussed from a variety of perspectives and the
panelists will include an archivist, a member of the
Hernandez family, a copyright specialist, an arts
attorney, and a collector. This event is free and open
to the public.
Speakers
include:
Syreeta N. Swann
Joseph, Copyright specialist; Larry Frazier,
Attorney for Wills, Estates & Probate Law; Philip
Merrill, Founder of Nanny Jack & Co.,
author, historian, and former appraiser of Black
Memorabilia on PBS' Antiques Roadshow; Allan
Stypeck Owner of Second Story Books / Senior
Member; Yvonne Hernandez, Sister, Nestor
Hernandez, Jr.; Donna M. Wells, Prints and Photo
Librarian at Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard
University, author, historian, co-author of Legacy:
Treasures of Black History.
Yvonne Carignan, archivist
for the Historical Society of Washington, DC, will
moderate the program on the 15th.
Donna M. Wells / Prints and Photographs Librarian /
Moorland-Spingarn Research Center / Howard University /
500 Howard Place, NW / Washington, DC 20059 / (202)
806-7480 / fax: (202) 806-6405
dwells@howard.edu
* * * *
*
|
Donna
M. Wells is Prints and Photographs Librarian
at Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center. Before coming to Howard,
she was the assistant archivist for the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science. Formerly, she served as the
archivist for Gallaudet University, where
she also taught Museum Studies, and has also
worked as a photo librarian at the Library
of Congress.
Since receiving her Masters degree in
library and archives administration in 1983,
Wells has devoted her work to the care and
interpretation of African American
collections and to the preservation of
Washington, DC history. Currently, she
serves on the city’s Emancipation
Celebration Commission and on the Historical
Records Advisory Review Board.
She is also a board member of the Historical
Society of Washington, DC and has served on
the program committee of the DC Historical
Studies Conference since 1995. |
 |
In 1993, she was a consultant for the
development of an archive at Smithsonian’s Anacostia
Museum and in 2001 she was an advisor to the
Griffith Stadium Memorial and Museum Project.
Recently, she was drafted to serve as a consultant
for Fred’s Army, an organization on Maryland’s
Easton Shore which is devoted to honoring their most
famous resident, Frederick Douglass.
Ms. Wells is
involved in a number of projects devoted to the care
and preservation of historical image collections.
She frequently lectures and conducts workshops on
the care of photographs for general audiences. Her
lectures on photographic history incorporate a
unique approach that fuses the role of African
Americans as the subject, as the creator, and as the
critic of images. Although not a photographer, she
is an active member of the Exposure Group African
American Photographers Association and the FotoCraft
Camera Club, serving as a consultant for their
public programs and as a resource for the archiving
of their life’s work.
She has
published reviews and articles on photography and on
photographers, including Protecting Your Image,
which appeared in Essence Magazine in1999, and
several short biographies which will be published in
the upcoming encyclopedia of African American
biographies by Oxford University Press. She is
co-author with Thomas C. Battle of National
Geographic’s award winning Legacy: Treasures of
Black History. Currently, she is working as a
researcher and writer for Freedom in my Heart: a
People’s Courage and Contribution, a joint
publication of National Geographic and the U. S.
National Slavery Museum
Ms. Wells is a
native Washingtonian. She received her Bachelors of
Art in art history from Hampton University, a
Masters in Library Science from the University of
Maryland, and is A.B.D. in the Department of History
at Howard University.
* *
* * *
The photographs of Nestor Hernández, Jr.—Nestor
Hernandez, Jr. departed this life on Friday, May 12,
2006 in Washington, DC. He was 45. Nestor will be
missed by the many, many people whose lives he
touched.
* * * *
*
|
A Treasury of American Folklore
By
Benjamin Botkin
Botkin
embraced the ever-evolving state of
folklore. According to him, folklore was
not
static but ever changing and being
created by people in their daily lives. He
developed his novel approach to American
folklore while teaching in
Oklahoma and later working in the
federal government during the late 1930s and
early '40s. His book Lay My Burden Down: A
Folk History of Slavery was the first book
to use
oral narratives of formerly enslaved
African Americans as legitimate
historical sources.
While many researchers viewed folklore as a
relic from the past, Botkin and other
New Deal folklorists insisted that
American folklore played a vibrant role in
the present, drawing on shared experience
and promoting a democratic culture.—Wikipedia
|
 |
* *
* * *
 |
Black Exodus
The Great Migration from the American South
Edited by
Alferdteen Harrison
What
were the causes that motivated legions of
black southerners to immigrate to the North?
What was the impact upon the land they left
and upon the communities they chose for
their new homes? Perhaps no pattern of
migration has changed America's
socioeconomic structure more than this mass
exodus of African Americans in the first
half of the twentieth century. Because of
this exodus, the South lost not only a huge
percentage of its inhabitants to northern
cities like Chicago, New York, Detroit, and
Philadelphia but also its supply of cheap
labor. Fleeing from racial injustice and
poverty, southern blacks took their culture
north with them and transformed northern
urban centers with their churches, social
institutions, and ways of life. In Black
Exodus eight noted scholars consider the
causes that stimulated the migration and
examine the far-reaching results. |
* * *
* *
B.B. King Thrill Is Gone /
B.B. King-The Thrill is Gone with lyrics
B.B. King - The Thrill Is Gone ft. Tracy Chapman /
B.B. King—The
Thrill Is Gone
B. B. King & Eric Clapton—The
Thrill Is Gone /
B. B. King—The
Thrill Is Gone (1993)
B.B.
King is the greatest living exponent of the blues and
considered by many to be the most influential guitarist
of the latter part of the 20th century. His career dates
back to the late forties and despite now being in his
eighties he remains a vibrant and charismatic live
performer. B.B. King has been a frequent visitor to the
Montreux festival, appearing nearly 20 times, so
choosing one performance was no easy task. This 1993
concert will surely rank as one of his finest at any
venue. With a superb backing band and a great set list
its a must for any blues fan.
* * *
* *
|
The Thrill is
Gone
The thrill is gone
The thrill is gone away
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away
You know you done me wrong baby
And you'll be sorry someday
The thrill is gone
It's gone away from me
The thrill is gone baby
The thrill is gone away from me
Although I'll still live on
But so lonely I'll be
The thrill is gone
It's gone away for good
Oh, the thrill is gone baby
Baby its gone away for good
Someday I know I'll be over it all baby
Just like I know a good man should
You know I'm free, free now baby
I'm free from your spell
I'm free, free now
I'm free from your spell
And now that it's all over
All I can do is wish you well
|
* *
* * *
|
The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a sharecropper's
wife, left Mississippi for Milwaukee in
1937, after her cousin was falsely accused
of stealing a white man's turkeys and was
almost beaten to death. In 1945, George
Swanson Starling, a citrus picker, fled
Florida for Harlem after learning of the
grove owners' plans to give him a "necktie
party" (a lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing
Foster made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for the
United States Army and couldn't operate in
his own home town." Anchored to these three
stories is Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist
Wilkerson's magnificent, extensively
researched study of the "great migration,"
the exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into the
novelistic narratives of Gladney, Starling,
and Pershing settling in new lands, building
anew, and often finding that they have not
left racism behind. The drama, poignancy,
and romance of a classic immigrant saga
pervade this book, hold the reader in its
grasp, and resonate long after the reading
is done. |
 |
* *
* * *
 |
Common Ground
A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three
American Families
By J.
Anthony Lukas
The
climax of this humane account of ten
years in Boston that began with news of
Martin Luther King's assassination, is a
watershed moment in the city's modern
history—the 1974 racist riots that
followed the court-ordered busing of
kids to integrate the schools. To bring
understanding to that moment, Lukas, a
former New York Times journalist,
focuses on two working-class families,
headed by an Irish-American widow and an
African-American mother, and on the
middle-class family of a white liberal
couple. Lukas goes beyond stereotypes,
carefully grounding each perspective in
its historical roots, whether in the
antebellum South, or famine-era Ireland.
In the background is the cast of public
figures—including
Judge Garrity,
Mayor White, and
Cardinal Cushing—with
cameo roles in this disturbing history
that won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for
nonfiction. |
* * * * *
|
Africa Unite
By Bob Marley
Africa, Unite
'Cause we're moving right out of Babylon
And we're going to our father's land
How good and how pleasant it would be
Before GOD and man, yeah
To see the unification of all Africans, yeah
As it's been said already let it be done,
yeah
We are the children of the Rastaman
We are the children of the Higher Man
Africa, unite 'cause the children wanna come
home
Africa, unite 'cause we're moving right out
of Babylon
And we're grooving to our father's land
How good and how pleasant it would be
Before GOD and man
To see the unification of all Rastaman, yeah
As it's been said already let it be done
I tell you who we are under the sun
We are the children of the Rastaman
We are the children of the Higher Man
So, Africa, unite, Africa, unite
Unite for the benefit of your people
Unite for it's later than you think
Unite for the benefit of your children
Unite for it's later than you think
Africa awaits its creators, Africa awaiting
its creators
Africa, you're my forefather cornerstone
Unite for the Africans abroad, unite for the
Africans a yard
Africa, Unite |
* * *
* *
The Slave Ship
By Marcus Rediker
Marcus Rediker
is professor of maritime history at the University of
Pittsburgh and the author of
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (1987),
The Many-Headed Hydra (2000), and
Villains of All Nations (2005), books that
explore seafaring, piracy, and the origins of
globalization. In The Slave Ship, Rediker
combines exhaustive research with an astute and highly
readable synthesis of the material, balancing
documentary snapshots with an ear for gripping
narrative. Critics compare the impact of Rediker’s
history, unique for its ship-deck perspective, to
similarly compelling fictional accounts of slavery in
Toni Morrison’s
Beloved and Charles Johnson’s
Middle Passage. Even scholars who have written
on the subject defer to Rediker’s vast knowledge of the
subject. Bottom line:
The Slave Ship is sure to become a
classic of its subject.— Bookmarks
Magazine
*
* * * *
 |
Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
|
* *
* * *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
 |
* * * * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
posted 26 September 2008
|
