Black Life

Calvin Hicks, a photographer who documented the nuances of daily African American life in Los Angeles and co-founded an association and gallery to preserve and display the work of black photographers, died May 20 at Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center after a long battle with cancer, said his friend B. Scottye Price. He was 71. When he struggled to find a space to exhibit his photographs, Hicks co-founded Black Gallery in 1984 in the old Santa Barbara Plaza in Baldwin Hills. "If you were a person of color, you weren't getting very many shows in the area.

The large, bold, unabashedly painterly paintings of Henry Taylor find a fitting stage at Blum & Poe. Spaciously hung in high-ceiling rooms, interspersed with a handful of found object sculptures, the paintings have a potent presence, with a rich and distinctly human character that one rarely sees now as a mainstay in painting. The work hews close to a strain of African American painting tracing back to Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, one that drew simultaneously from folk art and modernism in its depictions of black life in America.

Our Authors Study Club, the Los Angeles branch of the Assn. for the Study of Afro-American Life and History, is accepting entries from undergraduate and graduate college students for its annual Afro-American Life History essay contest. Essays may be submitted on any topic that explores the life, history and culture of African-Americans, club President Delores Nehemiah said. Entries should have appropriate documentation and be written in standard college style, with footnotes.

Calvin Hicks, a photographer who documented the nuances of daily African American life in Los Angeles and co-founded an association and gallery to preserve and display the work of black photographers, died May 20 at Ronald Reagan-UCLA Medical Center after a long battle with cancer, said his friend B. Scottye Price. He was 71. When he struggled to find a space to exhibit his photographs, Hicks co-founded Black Gallery in 1984 in the old Santa Barbara Plaza in Baldwin Hills. "If you were a person of color, you weren't getting very many shows in the area.

Roland Charles, a photographer and curator who founded the Black Photographers Assn. of California and ran the influential Black Gallery in the Crenshaw district for more than a decade, has died. Charles died Friday of complications from a heart attack suffered while jogging in Pan Pacific Park on April 27. He was 61. Born near New Orleans, Charles came to Southern California in the early 1960s after serving in the Air Force.

For several years now, Pepsi has pumped many millions of dollars into signing big-name black celebrity spokespersons such as Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie and Tina Turner. That will continue. But the president of the black-owned advertising agency that has just taken over Pepsi's estimated $3-million minority advertising account says that Pepsi will soon test other, far less costly, ways of reaching the black consumer: black life style commercials.

It is an unlikely spot for a fine art gallery, the far end of a sprawling horseshoe-shaped shopping center that is populated mostly by beauty salons, cleaners and small markets. Yet the Black Gallery, founded to showcase rarely seen talent, is used to being something of an oddity. Now in its 10th year at the Santa Barbara Plaza, the gallery prides itself on providing a haven for photographers who strive to capture aspects of black life largely absent from the gritty pages of daily newspapers.

Lorenz Bell Graham, a former missionary, probation officer and social worker credited with bringing realistic black characters to young people's literature by building many of his tales around the English folk patois of African peoples, has died in West Covina. Graham, known particularly for his "Town" series about a young black's struggle to overcome racism as he becomes a doctor, was 87 when he died Monday of cancer, his daughter, Ruth Siegrist, said.

The National Baptist Convention U.S.A. Inc. plans to launch a cable TV news magazine on black life and achievements, the denomination's president, the Rev. T. J. Jemison, announced. It will deal with "education, politics, civics--not just religion--all the problems of the world," said Jemison, who was in Nashville for the denomination's annual meeting and dedication of its new $10-million Baptist World Center. The denomination is the country's third largest Protestant body--7.

Vincent Smith, 74, an artist whose expressionist paintings, murals and book illustrations portrayed black life, died of lymphoma complicated by pneumonia Dec. 27 in New York City. A figurative painter prominent in the Black Arts movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Smith had more than two dozen one-man shows, and was represented in more than 30 group shows over the last three decades.

Willie Robert Middlebrook, a photographer who sought to enlarge public perceptions of the African American community through painterly depictions of its people and places, died Saturday at Brotman Medical Center in Culver City. He was 54. The cause was complications of a stroke suffered last month, said his daughter, Jessica Middlebrook. Middlebrook's death came just a week after the unveiling at the new Expo/Crenshaw Metro station of one of his largest public installations, a series of 24 mosaic panels based on his photographs.

I have a kind of collect-them-all affection for the PBS biographical series "American Masters," now in its 22nd year and happily catholic in its definition of who qualifies as an American Master. Jasper Johns, Julia Child and James Brown, to name just three whose names start with J. Some editions are better than others, of course, and few are really critical of their subjects, even when allowing a peek at the warts -- their American mastery is expressed and explicated, yet always taken as read.

In the script for the landmark 1964 film "Nothing but a Man," actor Ivan Dixon saw something familiar in the character Duff Anderson. Duff was a railroad worker in love with Josie, a schoolteacher and minister's daughter who lived in an Alabama town. The story of Duff's attempts to live with dignity and to love, despite racial injustice, was an honest depiction of black life in America, Dixon said.

For 20 years, Oran Z. Belgrave has been looking for that box. It's the one the first black G.I. Joe doll came in back in the mid-1960s. He'll pay $200 when he finds it. But that's it -- really it. Belgrave isn't looking to buy more things. His obsession with collecting African American-themed antiques and memorabilia has consumed the better part of his life, and now, Belgrave said, "I have to hold myself down." His place is so crammed, a person can barely walk through it.

Three Highland Park gang members convicted of deadly hate-crime attacks against African Americans were sentenced to life in prison without parole Monday. The members of the Latino gang the Avenues had been prosecuted for breaking federal hate-crime laws -- statutes typically used against white supremacist groups. They were convicted of carrying out a conspiracy that violated their victims' rights to live and walk in Highland Park. The conspiracy included several killings.

When black actors and actresses were still relegated to the maid and butler roles in movies, John H. Johnson knew black readers wanted to know about the lives of black celebrities. And he knew black readers wanted to dream a little, perhaps to copy a table setting of Marian Anderson, to read about the achievements of black people all over the world.

Frank E. Bolden, one of two accredited black war correspondents during World War II, died Aug. 28 in Pittsburgh of undisclosed causes. He was 90. Born in Washington, Pa., he was one of three sons of the city's first black mail carrier. Although he earned top grades at the University of Pittsburgh, racial prejudice thwarted his plans to pursue a career as a doctor or teacher, so Bolden went to work for the Pittsburgh Courier, then one of the most influential black newspapers in the country.

The sharecroppers' daughter looked past the broken windows of the grand old home on West Adams Boulevard in Los Angeles -- past the weeds outside and the stray cats within -- and fell in love. In the rural Louisiana parish where Arlillian Moody was born, this was the kind of house where only white people lived. Where others saw a decrepit dowager, she saw Elegant Manor, a place where her people -- black people, working people -- could celebrate, dress up, take classes, get married, hold church.

These men and women are not actors, producers or directors. They are ordinary people, who live ordinary lives, whose names will not appear among the credits of any film. Yet to the staff of the nonprofit Pan African Film Festival, this group of volunteers plays a crucial role in their effort to promote movies that destroy stereotypes and challenge notions of what it means to be a person of African descent.