Subject: Los Angeles (Calif.) and African American businesspeople / Collection: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection - UCLA Library Digital Collections Search Results

Description:: The airport located at 135th and Western Avenue was called the Western Avenue Airport from 1936 to 1939.
Date:: [1936-1939]
Resource Type:: still image
Collection:: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection
OpenUCLA Collections

Description:: A. J. (Andrew Jackson) Roberts attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin College. After graduation he taught school, married Ellen Hemings (a granddaughter of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson) in Chillicothe, Ohio, and moved to California as an early pioneer in 1888. He founded a transfer and trucking business in 1905, sold it and founded the A. J. Roberts and Sons mortuary. The firm began at 12th and Los Angeles, moved to 1119-1121 S. Los Angeles, and to 1415 S. Central Avenue in 1922.
Date:: [1922 or later]
Resource Type:: still image
Collection:: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection
OpenUCLA Collections

Description:: Exterior view of the A. J. Roberts and Sons mortuary, with a sign reading "Roberts Mortuary" located at 1415 Central Avenue.
Date:: [1922 or later]
Resource Type:: still image
Collection:: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection
OpenUCLA Collections

Description:: Banquet table at an anniversary celebration of Drs. John and Vada Somerville with flowers, candles, coffee urns and two cakes. This is at their home at 2401 Harvard Blvd. where the Somervilles lived from 1944 to 1950/51.
Date:: [between 1944-1950]
Resource Type:: still image
Photographer:: Gilwee, Jim
Collection:: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection
OpenUCLA Collections

Description:: Robert James Boyd was born in North Carolina. He married Emma P. Barrett in Los Angeles and in 1910 they lived at 1242 El Molino (now 1242 Kenmore Ave.) in Los Angeles, next to 1244 El Molino, where Emma had lived with her family before she was married from as early as 1900. By 1917, he is reported as working in a barbershop in Riverside city directories from 1917 to 1947. According to Miriam Matthews, he owned the barbershop. Robert and Emma had four children: Barrett, Willis, Helen and Edward.
Date:: [1902-1910]
Resource Type:: still image
Collection:: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection
OpenUCLA Collections

Description:: Lorenzo Bowdoin was a Los Angeles businessman, civic leader, philanthropist and NAACP leader. One of the first three black clerks hired by the Los Angeles Post Office in 1906, he worked there for 38 years and improved hiring and promotion policies for blacks. He was one of the organizers of Angelus Mortuary (1925) and was the treasurer for many years. He was also a member of the board of directors of the Haitian Coffee Co. He was active in many civic organizations including the Metropolitan YMCA.
Date:: [circa 1940]
Resource Type:: still image
Photographer:: Cloud's Studio, L. A.
Collection:: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection
OpenUCLA Collections

Description:: Studio portrait of the Boyd family with the parents Robert James Boyd and Emma P. Barrett Boyd, and their children, left to right: Barrett, Helen and Willis. Robert and the children are seated on a wooden garden bench placed in front of a painted landscape backdrop.
Date:: [circa 1910]
Resource Type:: still image
Collection:: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection
OpenUCLA Collections

Description:: Dr. Vada Somerville (born Vada Jetmore Watson) of Pomona graduated from USC, married dentist John Alexander Somerville (1912), was the first African American woman and the second African American person to graduate from USC School of Dentistry (1918), and was the first African American woman certified to practice dentistry in the state of California. She was a civil rights activist, highly involved in several civic and community organizations.
Date:: June 4, 1955
Resource Type:: still image
Collection:: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection
OpenUCLA Collections

Description:: From left: Unidentified woman holds a piece of paper in front of Peter W. Dauterive, as Dr. H. Claude Hudson, president of Broadway Federal Savings and Loan, gestures toward him.
Date:: [1960s]
Resource Type:: still image
Collection:: Miriam Matthews Photograph Collection
OpenUCLA Collections

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