All posts by Miriam

Collections, Community History, Cultural Encounters

The Hills of Anacostia Are Alive…with the Sound of Music

Leave a comment

The February birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln inspired the timing of Black History Month. Anacostia Community Museum Collections Researcher Jennifer Sieck goes beyond the birthdays and behind the scenes in the archives:

Abolitionist, activist, ambassador, author . . . All describe Frederick Douglass (circa 1818-1895), but did you know he was a musician, too? In the photograph below, Douglass’s violin rests beside him as he works at his desk in Anacostia, a neighborhood in southeast Washington, D.C.

Douglass in his library
Frederick Douglass in his library at Cedar Hill, 1411 W Street, SE, Washington, DC. Circa 1893. Courtesy of National Park Service, Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

In his three autobiographies, Douglass recalls listening to “tones loud, long, and deep” sung by African Americans with whom he was enslaved.[1] The songs “breathed the prayer and complaint of souls boiling over with the bitterest anguish.”[2] He credits these songs with his “first glimmering conception of the dehumanizing character of slavery.”[3] Biographer James M. Gregory recounts that “while [Douglass was] an exile in Scotland . . . in a despondent mood he saw a violin . . . at a store door, and . . . bought it. He then went home, shut himself up, [and] played for three days until he was in tune himself and again went out into the world—a cheerful man.”[4]

NMAAHC-A2010_26_29_8_1_002
Joseph Douglass with violin, and Frederick Douglass in Boston, MA, May 10, 1894. Photo by Denis Bourdon. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Dr. Charlene Hodges Byrd A2010_26_29_8_1_002

Douglass shared his love of music with his family, especially grandson Joseph, who became a concert violinist. Born in Anacostia in 1869, Joseph Douglass studied at the New England Conservatory of Music and often performed before and after his grandfather’s lectures. They posed for this photo, for example, in Boston, Massachusetts, where Frederick Douglass spoke and Joseph Douglass played at the People’s Church (Methodist Episcopal) on May 10, 1894.[5] It was among the last photographs for which Frederick Douglass sat; he died on February 20, 1895.

Joseph Douglass
Joseph Douglass. Evans-Tibbs Collection, Anacostia Community Museum Archives, Smithsonian Institution, gift of the Estate of Thurlow E. Tibbs, Jr. ACM-acma_PH2003.7063.174

Joseph Douglass considered himself a musical ambassador. He toured abroad and in the United States, “particularly throughout the South and in Southern colleges” to reach African American audiences.[6] The renowned Howard University educator also directed community music schools, which provided music education and social services to immigrant families in New York City and Washington, D.C., respectively.

Joseph Douglass lived with his family in the U Street Corridor of Washington, D.C., a neighborhood also called the “Black Broadway” for its thriving arts scene. It was home, for instance, to composer Duke Ellington and opera singer Madame Lillian Evanti (Lillian Evans). The Anacostia Community Museum’s portrait of Joseph Douglass is part of the Evans-Tibbs Collection, named for Lillian Evans and her husband, Roy Tibbs, a music professor at Howard University. Joseph Douglass contracted pneumonia and died at age 66 in 1935.

Did You Know?

  • Frederick Douglass’s violin is on display at his home, Cedar Hill, a National Park Service site approximately one mile from the Anacostia Community Museum.
  • Frederick Douglass taught his son, Frederick Douglass, Jr., and grandson Joseph Douglass to play violin.
  • At age 22, Joseph Douglass performed at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair in collaboration with artists such as poet Paul Lawrence Dunbar.
  • On February 14, 1896, Joseph Douglass gave a concert to benefit a “home for friendless girls” at Metropolitan A.M.E. Church in Washington, D.C.
  • Joseph Douglass was the first violinist to record for the Victor Talking Machine Company (1914) and the first African American violinist to tour internationally.
  • Like his famous grandfather, Joseph Douglass appeared regularly at the White House. He gave concerts for Presidents McKinley, [Theodore] Roosevelt, and Taft.[7]

[1] Douglass, Frederick. Life and Times of Frederick Douglass, Written by Himself. 1892. Boston: De Wolfe and Fiske Co., p. 14.

[2] Douglass, 14.

[3] Douglass, 14.

[4] Gregory, James M. Frederick Douglass, The Orator. Containing an Account of His Life; His Eminent Public Services; His Brilliant Career as Orator; Selections from His Speeches and Writings. 1893. Springfield, Mass.: Willey and Co., p. 211.

[5] Stauffer, John, Zoe Trodd, and Celeste-Marie Bernier. 2015. Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American. New York: Liveright Publishing Co., p. 61.

[6] “Joseph Douglass, Abolitionist’s Grandson, Dies.” Baltimore Afro-American, December 14, 1935, p. 22.

[7] “Joseph Douglass, Noted Violinist, Dies.” The Washington Post, December 8, 1935, p. 17.

Collections, Community History

A Fashionable Journalist

1 Comment
On this day 36 years ago, Mayor Marion Barry Jr. declared June 12, 1982 Ethel Lois Payne Day in Washington, DC. Collections Researcher Bailey Ferster commemorates the day by digging into the museum’s collections for a personal look at this grande dame of journalism.

Known as the “First-Lady of the Black Press,” Ethel Payne earned a reputation as a no-nonsense journalist who asked some of the most challenging questions. We’ve written about her accomplishments before in this blog, and today we reflect on her personal sense of style.

Ethel Payne, Portrait commissioned by Miller Brewing Company, 1987

In line with her fearless journalistic practice, Ethel Payne was a bold and charismatic dresser, unafraid to stand out in a crowd. Photographs show her wearing bright colors and eye-catching prints, and a 1987 painting portrays her elegantly attired in a loose-fitting multicolored dress with a long bead necklace, pendant earrings, bracelets and large rings. The background is painted in muted tones that accentuate her strong presence.

Some of her personal effects in the museum’s collection include a set of patterned deer hide suitcases and fur trimmed capes she used while traveling. Many of the clothes she donned were custom-made outfits from overseas, tangible connections to the cultures she experienced while traveling for work. One of her most treasured accessories, however, was a wide-brimmed green hat decorated with artificial flowers, leaves, and berries. Wide-rim hats as well as floral hats were popular during much of her career, from the 1940s to the 1970s, and Ethel’s pistachio green hat took the fashion to its zenith. More eccentric and expressive than most, the hat was decorated by hand, each flower, berry, and leaf stitched into place with green thread that is visible on the inside and underside of the brim. This hat, and Ethel’s other eye-catching fashion choices, lend credence to historic tales of her commanding presence on the media circuit.

Ethel Payne’s Floral Hat, Anacostia Community Museum

An ongoing museum project to document objects in our collection is adding depth and texture to our understanding of important community leaders. Ethel Payne’s hat and other personal accessories speak to her unique style and provide a sense of her striking personality. Her fashion choices offer an intimate look at the remarkable woman who earned a national reputation for her trailblazing work in journalism.

 

Collections, Community and Creativity, Community History, Urban Arts

Help us identify these families!

Leave a comment

In honor of National Quilting Day, research conservator Annaick Keruzec takes a closer look at several quilts with photographic patches in the museum’s collection.

Quilts are made for comfort, to decorate a home, or to tell a family story. For a textile conservator like myself, each quilt is unique and fascinating. Crafted from small pieces of fabric, they carry within them things that were part of the quilt maker’s environment. I can spend hours researching each fabric square, identifying fibers through the microscope or combing through historic sales catalogues to date and source the fabrics. I can examine how they were selected, arranged, and stitched together. I can document and admire the handiwork, the color combinations, and the artistry. Quilts are richly textured objects, full of connections and personal choices made by the maker. Indeed, researching quilts can offer remarkable insights on the person who made them.

Quilt with photographic patches
Shroud Series #2, Quilt by Fay Pullen Fairbrother. Photographed during examination in the collections processing room of the museum.

Several quilts in the museum’s collection incorporate squares with photographic images printed on them. This gives an added layer of complexity. How were they made? Why were these photos chosen? What was the artist’s intention? I am collaborating with a photo conservator and conservation scientists at the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute (MCI) to document these photographic quilts historically, technically, and personally from the artist’s perspective. In the next few months, we will analyze the fabrics, inks, emulsions, and binders used to create the photo patches – and we will report on it in this blog.

I’ve been examining a set of seven quilts created in the early 1990s by the artist Fay Pullen Fairbrother (1948-1997). Collectively titled The Shroud Series, they incorporate turn-of-the-century photographs depicting family portraits, lynchings, and the Ku Klux Klan. In an artist statement shortly after she made the quilts, Fairbrother wrote that the photographs of the KKK activities, studio portraits of black and white families, and lynched men clearly reflected a dissolution of family values and morals, Christian or otherwise. She chose to accentuate the dissonance of the violent imagery by juxtaposing it with quilt making, which has associations of comfort and family. The images stand out among the patchwork of the quilt.

 

I’ve been sourcing the images for the 50 photo-patches Fairbrother created, although I am not sure where and how she located them pre-internet. She reused some images, so they constitute a total of 24 different photographs. Among them are eight photographs depicting lynchings. Lynchings were public events that were described and recorded in local and sometimes national news. Some were depicted on early 20th-century postcards. I have identified the men in four photographs as Bennie Simmons (1913), Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith (1930), Claude Neal (1934), and Rubin Stacy (1935), whose photographs are published in Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (2000). Four other scenes remain unidentified.

On three of the quilts in the Shroud Series, Fairbrother incorporated family portraits. They show well-dressed black and white families posing against draped studio backdrops. In contrast to the lynching photographs, the portraits are private and personal. Family portraits are also ubiquitous, and it is hard to describe them in a way that is unique. As a result, portraits are difficult to research and document. I have contacted archives to which Fairbrother might have had access, but have not yet located the images she used.

Please help us identify the five family portraits shown above and below! Have you seen these photographs or any like them? Let us know in the comments section.

  

Our scientific research on the quilts will continue to reveal Fairbrother’s technical processes. Meanwhile I am hoping to discover more about the artist’s life and sources of inspiration for her exceptional quilt series.

50th Anniversary of ACM, Anacostia, Community History, D.C., Washington

A Portrait of Frederick Douglass

1 Comment

2018 marks the bicentennial of abolitionist and civil rights activist Frederick Douglass, whose Cedar Hill Estate is located one mile from our museum’s current location. In his honor, collections researcher Meghan Mullins showcases a portrait that was created by one of our museum’s early employees, artist Larry Erskine Thomas.

Continue reading A Portrait of Frederick Douglass →