Documenting our past: The Teenie Harris Archive Project
Black-and-white photographs of the African American community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania from 1930 to 1970 taken by Teenie Harris, African American photographer for the African American newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier
More About This Collection
Creator
Harris, Teenie, 1908-1998
Date of Original
1930/1970
Subject
African American photographers--Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh Courier Publishing Co.
African Americans--Pennsylvania--Social life and customs--History--20th century
People
Harris, Teenie, 1908-1998
Location
United States, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County, Pittsburgh, 40.44062, -79.99589
Medium
black-and-white photographs
Type
StillImage
Description
Teenie Harris' photographs portray a range of subjects, evoke the spirit of an era, and display the humanity of a people. Harris' 40-year career with the Pittsburgh Courier, one of the largest and most influential Black newspapers in the country, began as the nation emerged from the Depression and ended with the Civil Rights Movement. Numbering upwards of 80,000 images, this archive represents the largest single collection of photographic images of any Black community in the United States-or the world for that matter.
In 2001, Carnegie Museum of Art acquired the collection from the Harris family. The museum is in the process of cataloguing and digitizing the images and plans to present a major retrospective on Harris' work in 2009. Using the museum's online collection search page, you can now view over 18,000 images in the collection, and more are being added to the database each week. Since many of the photographs and negatives were not labeled, the museum asks the assistance of the public in helping to identify the people, places, and events in the images and provides an e-mail link included in every Teenie Harris negative record in our online database.
The Civil Rights Digital Library received support from a National Leadership Grant for Libraries awarded to the University of Georgia by the Institute of Museum and Library Services for the aggregation and enhancement of partner metadata.
Rights Holder
Carnegie Museum of Art
Contributing Institution
Carnegie Museum of Art
Rights
