Group of African American dancers and journalists, Los Angeles, 1940s

Title: Group of African American dancers and journalists, Los Angeles, 1940s
Date Created: [1940s?]
Date: 1940/1949
Language: No linguistic content
Collection: Walter L. Gordon, Jr./William C. Beverly, Jr. Collection

Summary: Joe "Smoke Rings" Harris was a Los Angeles reporter and newspaper columnist.
Leonard Reed started his career as a dancer, became an all-around entertainer. Later he kept a booking office in Hollywood.
Gertrude Gipson was known as a writer and editor for the Los Angeles Sentinel.
Marva Louis, stenographer and big band singer, married and divorced heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis twice between 1935 and 1949; during their marriage, she also worked as a model. She married physician Albert Lee Spaulding in 1950.
Peg Leg Bates was a one-legged dancer who lost his leg during childhood in a cotton gin accident, but taught himself to dance with a wooden peg leg.
Bill Graham was a manager and promoter chiefly associated with Joe and Marva Louis.
Gertrude Gipson Penland was an African-American syndicated columnist, editor, nightclub owner, publicist, and civil rights activist. She was a columnist and entertainment editor for the California Eagle and, then, for the Los Angeles Sentinel.
Description: L to R: Leonard Reed, Marva Louis, Joe Harris, Clayton "Peg Leg" Bates, Gertrude Gipson, and Bill Graham. The man standing in the back is unidentified.
All information concerning the content and description of the image was provided by Walter Gordon.

Genre: Black-and-white photographs
Names: Spaulding, Marva Louis, 1915-2000
Bates, Peg Leg
Graham, Bill, promoter
Harris, Joe, 1910-1985
Gibson-Penland, Gertrude, 1923-1999
Reed, Leonard
Location: California--Los Angeles
Resource type: still image
Subjects: Lifestyle; Tap dancers--United States
African American dancers
African American women journalists--California--Los Angeles
African American journalists--California--Los Angeles

Repository: University of California, Los Angeles. Library Special Collections
Local Identifier: 642
YRLSC_gordonphotos_0642
Collection 1867 Box 3 Folder 1
ARK: ark:/21198/zz0025pr5b
Manifest url