Charles “Teenie” Harris (1908-1988) is ranked among the great photographers of recent times. As presented in this book, Harris’ work provides a magnificent visual history of African-American life in Pittsburgh in the 1920s through the 1950s.

A little background puts Harris’ work in context. Having been born in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Charles Harris was a prominent resident of the black “Hill” district. Having acquired his first professional camera in 1931, he worked as a freelance photographer, and then was hired by The Pittsburgh Courier, the preeminent national black news weekly. (As Stanley Crouch notes in this book’s forward, the Courier “carried on the inarguably grand American tradition of liberating the humanity of the Negro from the epithets and the stereotypes backed up by bad science and superstition…). As for the city of Pittsburgh, it had a long history with a culturally resplendent black community. Pittsburgh’s black community had begun to grow quickly during World War I, as families migrated north to take jobs with the steel and coal industries. Black cultural life in Pittsburgh flourished in the succeeding decades. In fact, segregation and discrimination led the Hill district to develop its own clubs and restaurants, and the city developed two black baseball teams. The fruits of such developments are the focus of Charles Harris’ photographic art.

The photographs presented in this book are stunning in quality and content. They are high resolution duotones, well- presented in full page spreads. Most of the focus is on people living their daily lives. The humanity and dignity of Harris’ photographic subjects shines forth throughout. Among the photographic subjects we see street scenes; people in clubs and restaurants; men playing checkers on the sidewalk as their friends watch over their shoulders; a newspaper delivery boy; a waitress; a soda jerk; a constable; a female disc jockey; curious children watching a sidewalk piano player; boys with a toy army tank; an injured woman under a streetcar; a black swim instructor at an integrated pool; an old woman holding threatening Nazi posters. Other images show Boy Scouts; school children being inoculated against polio; a boy and a girl with their Easter baskets; a railroad worker; a coal miner; a firefighter; and a little black girl holding a “white” baby doll. Still others capture the growing issues of civil rights (sign- wielding protestors demonstrating against the hiring practices at Isalys’; a man protesting at the courthouse against unequal treatment in the justice system; Martin Luther King at the University of Pittsburgh). Some of the images show visiting politicians (Richard Nixon, John Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Eleanor Roosevelt). Several others show musicians (Duke Ellington, Luis Armstrong, Sam Cooke; Lena Horne, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstein) and other celebrities (Cassius Clay).

The photographic images in this work are truly superb. If a book ever deserved five-stars, this one certain does. ( )