People, Locations, Episodes

Beauford Delaney, Artist born

*On this date in 1901, Beauford Delaney was born. He was an African American artist.

From Knoxville, Tennessee., his brother Joseph was also a painter. His parents named him Beauford for the coastal town Beauford, South Carolina where they had come from. Early in life he showed skill in drawing and he studied at the Massachusetts Normal School, the South Boston School of Art and the Copley Society.. Delaney moved to New York during the Harlem Renaissance gaining a reputation as a pastel portraitist. Some of his works were exhibited at the Whitney Studio Gallery in 1930.

John Bubbles, Tap Dancer born

*On this date in 1902, John Bubbles was born. He was an African American dancer and entertainer; know as “the father of rhythm tap”.

John William Sublett (his name at birth), was from Louisville, Kentucky and grew up in Indianapolis, IN. At the age of eleven he teamed up with Ford Lee Washington in an act billed as Buck and Bubbles. Bubbles sang and danced while Buck played accompaniment. They won a number of amateur competitions performing around the Louisville, Detroit, and New York City areas, sometimes in blackface.

Wilfredo Lam, Afro Cuban Artist born

*Wilfredo Lam was born on this date in 1902. He was an Afro Cuban artist.

Born (Wifredo Yscar de la Concepayn Lam y Castilla) Lam was from Sagua La Grande, a small town in Cuba. His father was Chinese and his mother was African, Spanish and Native-Cuban. Young Lam had artistic talent as a young man; he went to Havana to study law, and also learned painting at the Academy of San Alejandro. In 1923, he traveled to Madrid to further his artist studies. During that time (1929) he married Eva Piriz but both she and their young son died in 1931 of Tuberculosis.

Lucreaty Clark, Folk Artist born

*Lucreaty Clark was born on this date in 1903. She was a Black folk artist known for basket weaving. Lucreaty J. Clark was born in rural Jefferson County, Florida. She was one of the youngest sixteen children in a sharecropping family that worked on plantations, picking cotton and performing other farm-related tasks. She learned how to weave baskets […]

Gwendolen Avril Coleridge-Taylor, Pianist, and Composer born

*Gwendolen Avril Coleridge-Taylor was born on this date in 1903.  She was a Black English pianist, conductor, and composer.   She was born in South Norwood, London, and was the daughter of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Jessie Walmisley. They had met as students at the Royal College of Music. She had an older brother, Hiawatha. […]

Edwin Rosskam, Photographer born

*Edwin Rosskam was born on this date in 1903. He was a white Jewish-American freelance photographer and writer.   Edwin Rosskam was born in Munich, Germany, to American parents and came to Philadelphia, PA, in his late teens in 1919. Rosskam aspired to be an artist and took up painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. […]

Elisabeth Welch, Singer, and Dancer born

*Elisabeth Welch was born on this date in 1904. She was a African American chanteuse singer and dancer.

Miguel Covarrubias, Artist born

*Miguel Covarrubias was born on this date in 1904.  He was a Mexican painter, caricaturist, illustrator, ethnologist, and art historian. He captured the spirit of the Harlem Renaissance in much of his work and his book, Negro Drawings.  José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud was born in Mexico City. After graduating from the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria at […]

Elvera Sanchez Davis, Dancer born.

*Elvera “Baby” Sanchez Davis was born on September 1, 1905. She was an Afro Cuban American dancer. Elvera Sanchez was born in New York City to Afro Cuban immigrants Luisa Valentina and Marco Sánchez, a cigar maker. She began her career as a chorus-line dancer at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem in 1921. She became […]

James A. Porter, Artist, and Historian born

James Amos Porter was born on this date in 1905. He was an African American painter and art historian, instrumental in the development of the scholarly study of African American art.

Leonard Reed, Dancer, and Composer born

*Leonard Reed was born on this date in1907. He was an African American, Native American dancer, composer, choreographer and showman.

Mae Barnes, Stage Entertainer born

The birth of Mae Barnes in 1907 is celebrated on this date. She was an African American dancer and singer whose basic swinging approach fell between jazz and middle-of-the-road pop music.

G. Caliman Coxe, Artist and Educator born.

*G. Caliman Coxe was born on May 7,1907. He was a Black artist and educator. Gloucester Caliman Coxe was a native of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and moved to Louisville, KY. in 1924. In his 40s, he entered the University of Louisville to study art. He was the first African American to receive a Hite art scholarship […]

Rudolph Dunbar, Clarinetist and Conductor born

Rudolph Dunbar was born on this date in 1907. He was a Guyanese conductor, clarinetist, and composer.

Dunbar was born in Nabaclis, British Guyana. He was 14 when he joined the British Guiana Militia Band as a clarinet-playing apprentice. He immigrated to the United States five years later, and began studying at the Institute of Musical Art, (now the Juilliard School) in New York, where he was also involved with the Harlem jazz scene. During this time, he was a recording artist, playing clarinet solos. He also established a friendship with Black composer William Grant Still.

Charles Alston, Artist, and Teacher born

On this date we celebrate the birth of Charles Alston in 1907. He was an African American artist and teacher.

Charles Henry Alston was born in Charlotte, N.C. His father died when he was three. Soon after, his mother moved to New York and married Harry P. Bearden (the uncle of artist Romare Bearden). Alston attended DeWitt Clinton High School, taught there, and graduated from Columbia University in 1929. In 1931, he received a master’s degree from Columbia’s Teachers College.