Tube City Almanac

January 24, 2012

Briefly Noted: Heritage Center Spotlights 'Teenie' Harris

Category: Announcements || By

© 2006 Carnegie Museum of Art


© 2006 Carnegie Museum of ArtSnap! went Teenie Harris' camera, as Marva Louis, Katherine King and Portia Trotter rode the carousel at McKeesport's Olympia Park during the summer of 1939.

Snap! went Teenie Harris' camera, capturing world heavyweight boxing champion "Jersey Joe" Walcott as he sparred with Ben Skelton at Rainbow Gardens Amusement Park in 1951.

Snap! There are the ladies of the Bethlehem Baptist Church getting ready for a Women's Day luncheon in 1958.

Snap! There's McKeesport welcoming President Kennedy in 1962.

For nearly 40 years, Charles "Teenie" Harris --- also known as "One Shot," because he rarely made mistakes --- documented life in Western Pennsylvania for The Pittsburgh Courier, one of the nation's best-known African-American newspapers. Harris' camera didn't discriminate --- black and white, famous and infamous, young and old were all recorded for the pages of the Courier.

McKeesport Heritage Center will mark Black History Month with a program about Harris at 2:30 p.m. Feb. 19. Laurence Glasco, a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh, will be the guest speaker. The program is free and open to the public.

After retiring from the Courier in 1975, Harris' work was all but forgotten. He licensed his collection of 80,000 images to a local businessman who sold prints to the public at flea markets and street fairs until Harris was forced to sue for back royalties in 1998. Rights to the images were subsequently re-acquired by his family, who sold them to Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art.

Since 2003, the museum has scanned and cataloged nearly 60,000 of Harris' photos, many of which can now be viewed online. Glasco, who has written several books on the African-American experience in Pittsburgh, helped curate the museum's current exhibition of Harris' work. The exhibition will begin a national tour in February.

For more information about the Heritage Center, call (412) 678-1832 or visit the website.

. . .

Editor's Note: The writer of this article is a member of the board of directors of McKeesport Heritage Center. Opinions expressed at tubecityonline.com are not those of McKeesport Heritage Center, which has no control over the content on this website.

You are previewing your comment. Be sure to click on 'Post Comment' to store it.






Feedback on “Briefly Noted: Heritage Center Spotlights 'Teenie' Harris”

Y8Ozeq dxsghpenxsux, [url=http://smlhpgymnaex.com/]smlhpgymnaex[/url], [link=http://ctjlloddibbs.com/]ctjlloddibbs[/link], http://pobeolahajov.com/
dvpvau (URL) - May 27, 2013



One or more comments are waiting for approval by an editor.

Comments are now closed.