The words in black lettering stood out very clearly among the other papers, documents and posters on the auction table. “Mr. Berry Gordy’s Office.” They were printed beneath architectural drawings of an office space created…
Month: July 2017
1900s Hampton photos illustrate students at work
Posted in Black history, and Books
I had learned of Frances Benjamin Johnston’s photos after finding a ticket stub at auction for the 1900 Paris International Exposition. She had been commissioned by Hampton Institute to photograph the progress of a school that…
A stop-off at Tuskegee to honor an Airman uncle
Posted in Black history, history, Military, and Uncategorized
My uncle Charles – whom some of us called Dye and his siblings called CW – was a Tuskegee Airman, but I didn’t fully recognize it until long after he had died. I should have remembered,…
There was a time, as everyone knows, when you could buy just about anything from a Sears, Roebuck and Co. catalog. I was surprised to see, though, that Sears also sold “made -to-order” suits for men.…
Heavily used slate pencils in a metal case
Posted in Black history, and School
The small metal box had rusted on the top and gave no hint of what was inside. Opening the box, I found an even smaller and narrower box with an inscription that was partially rubbed off: “Young America…
Everybody seemed to be carrying a mattress. The first one I saw was under the arm of a young woman who was struggling to get what looked like a full mattress to her vehicle. Behind…
I was perusing the gourmet food section of a Marshalls store recently when I came upon a product straight from my childhood. Pork fat. When I was growing up in Georgia, it was called lard,…