Kwame Brathwaite
*Kwame Brathwaite was born on this date in 1938. He was a Black photojournalist and activist.
Born Gilbert Ronald Brathwaite in Brooklyn and brought up in the South Bronx, to immigrant parents from Barbados, who chronicled the cultural, political, and social developments of Harlem, Africa, and the African diaspora. His parents were Cecil and Margaret (Maloney) Brathwaite. As a boy in the early 1950s, he was enrolled at the School of Industrial Art (now the High School of Art and Design). He adopted the name Kwame in the early 1960s, a tribute to Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of post-colonial Ghana.
With his older brother Elombe Brath, Brathwaite founded the African Jazz Art Society and Studios in 1956, and Grandassa Models in 1962. On January 28, 1962, with his brother Elombe Brath, Brathwaite staged the Naturally '62 pageant, the first in a series of pageants featuring only Black models. The 1962 pageant was titled The Original African Coiffure and Fashion Extravaganza Designed to Restore Our Racial Pride & Standards. Held at the Harlem Purple Manor, a nightclub on East 125th Street, The Naturally pageants ran for five years, with the last one held in 1966.
In the 1960s, his work also appeared in the New York Amsterdam News, The City Sun, and The Daily Challenge. He photographed concerts of Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley, James Brown, and Muhammad Ali. In 2017, Brathwaite was honored at the 75th Aperture Gala. In 2021, the Pérez Art Museum Miami acquired "Untitled (AJASS Model on Black Background)" (1970s/2019), a work that portrays a female model figure dressed in patterns resembling quilts created in African American communities, such as those made at Gee's Bend, Alabama. The artist is a significant figure in the Black is Beautiful movement.
Kwame Brathwaite, renowned for documenting life and culture in Harlem and Africa, passed away in Manhattan on April 1, 2023, at the age of 85. He was survived by his wife Sikolo (whom he married c. 1966), his son Kwame Samori Brathwaite (known as Kwame Jr., born c. 1974), and his daughter Ndola Carlest.
