Calvin Littlejohn: Portrait of a Community in Black and White

Amazon.com Price: $29.95 (as of 16/04/2019 08:55 PST- Details)

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Description

 

In 1934, the year Calvin Littlejohn came to Fort Worth, the city used to be a sleepy little burg. This used to be the Jim Crow era, when mainstream newspapers wouldn’t publish pictures of black citizens and white photographers wouldn’t take pictures in black schools.

In Fort Worth, Littlejohn started what would develop into a lifelong career of documenting the black community. And there would be nothing remotely related to the white culture’s depictions of Amos ‘n’ Andy or black kids grinning over a slice of watermelon in Littlejohn’s portrayal of his adopted home and the people he came to appreciate and love. Littlejohn’s natural aptitude for drawing had been honed by correspondence courses in graphic design and a stint in a photo shop where he learned about the camera, lighting, and using shadows.

When Littlejohn used to be assigned to be the official photographer at I. M. Terrell—the city’s only black high school at the time—his professional career used to be launched.

Unlike many segregated cities, where blacks lived only in one section, blacks in Cowtown lived in each and every quadrant of the city. There used to be a thriving black business district, with hotels, restaurants, a movie theater, a bank, and a major hospital, pharmacy, and nursing school. And naturally, there were the schools and churches. All would eventually be seen through Littlejohn’s lens.

Even supposing he never got down to be the documentarian of Fort Worth’s black community, he did what he got down to do: to capture the most efficient of a community, that specialize in its good times.

This book features more than 150 shots Littlejohn captured over the course of his career.

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