Photo Collection: My Photo Sets on Flickr and Zenfolio

 Zenfolio Collection

Flickr Collection

I am including here links to the family photos collections I have uploaded onto Flickr and Zenfolio for reference.  All of these photos are limited in their use by the copyright of Faith Ringgold.  They are currently available at these addresses on Flickr for research and/or genealogical investigation, primarily not in large formats.

We have many more but this is a healthy group made up of photos from the teens through the 90s of myself, my sister, my Aunt, my mother, dad and grandmother Mme. Willi Posey, as well as some reproductions of the art of Faith Ringgold.

Photo-Essay: Stairs from Sugar Hill to the Valley

08stairway, originally uploaded by broadwayhousing.

These are the stairs that lead from Edgecombe Avenue, where I grew up and where my stepdad (Burdette) grew up down to the Valley where MJ and all her siblings and her mother first lived in the early 1920s and where my Mom spent her earlier years at 222 West 146th Street immortalized in her Street Story Quilt of 1986 (collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

When Faith started writing the stories that go with the earlier story quilts, such as "Who's Afraid of Aunt Jemima?" I had no idea where those voices in dialect telling neighborhood stories came from. It was as bracing as a cold shower. At first, I thought it was a put-on, a voice adapted for the amusement and entertainment of the reader as I came of age in a period in which anything delivered in the southern dialects of the colored tongue was considered a ruse and a form of cooning for the white folks.

I didn't yet understand that what I had been taught in the 60s and 70s to consider a deformation of black character and speech was actually an immensely rich source of a variety of working class, rural and subterranean black experiences, a series of lifestyles and adventures-- particularly that adventure of escaping hard times and Jim Crow--to emerge triumphant in the cities of the North and the West.

Chronologies and Documents: MJ Collection Inventory Notes

I. The Posey Family History: Photographs; Letters, Autobiography

1893-1992

List of Contents--Documents

1. Cardoza Posey note: “a part of two letters to me, father to son while in school at Florida Baptist Academy, Jacksonville, Florida. A letter from Papa, Feb 19, 1911

6 pieces of a handwritten letter from B.B. Posey, hardly legible.

2. Certificate of Death Evelyn Muriel Bingham (MJ's cousin, granddaughter of Betsy Bingham).

Department of Health, Division of Vital Statistics Certificate of DeathDuval County Florida, Jacksonville 56 years old. Jan 10, 1958. Born Oct. 22, 1900 Public School Teacher Mother Janie Brown and Father Peter Bingham Address: 612 Owen Avenue.

3. Funeral Service, Friday July 31, 1964—The Late Dr. JY Posey, Third Stone Baptist Church, 1591 Boston Road Bronx New York

4. Board of Public Instruction: Contract between BB Posey and Jacksonville, Florida.

Putnam County, Sept 15, 1897. Salary $50 per month.

Public School 29 at San Mateo

5. Letter from Aunt Janie in Jacksonville, Florida to nephew Cardoza July 4, 1960.

“It is very hot down here. I miss Evelyn so much. I feel strong in a new place. I am old now and I can’t get out much.”

6. Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia October 6, 1963.

7. J.W. Posey State of South Carolina County of Aiken Teacher’s Graded Certificate. September 3, 1883. Second Grade.

8. July 1, 1953—Letter from Ida Mae Bingham, Jacksonville Florida.

9. Letter from W. Walton Edwards—Attorney and Counsellor

August 9, 1913—Mr. Bunyan B. Posey, concerning the property of brother L.O. Posey.

10. Clipping—“Lawrence Dargan Hanged in Palatka” August 19^th, not sure of year.

11. Family Record Pages—

B.B. Posey—birth January 16, 1860, married Oct 15, 1891 and died May 15^th 1912.

Ida Mae B Posey—birth July 18tk, death July 20, 1927, etcetera.

Blake Funeral Home Book for MJ. Died October 28, 1981. Book of Friends Who Viewed.

.

Chronologies and Documents: Sonny Rollins Podcast and Interview at CUNY

Sonny Rollins Videos

The link here is http://www.sonnyrollins.com/video.php. These materials, including lots of videos of concerts and interviews, are from the website of Sonny Rollins who was a childhood friend of my Mom, my Dad Earl Wallace and my other dad Burdette Ringgold. The videos begin with an interview with Sonny's sister Gloria reminiscencing about life in the Harlem--the Sugar Hill Edgecombe Avenue area where they all grew up-- of the thirties and forties as Sonny, her younger brother, was growing up.
Rollins playing his saxophone on the Brooklyn Bridge figures prominently in one of my Mom's painted quilts to be seen on her website www.faithringgold.com. Bebop was the required music of my early childhood and of my parent's youth and Rollins was one of the precocious creators of this magnificent music. Recently Rollins was interviewed by Gary Giddins at the CUNY Graduate Center where Giddins teaches and where I am also on the faculty of the English Ph.D. Program. My sister and I were in attendance and hoped to get a chance to say hello personally because my sister Barbara hasn't met him (not much of a jazz fan) but the magnitude of the event including an overflow room made it an accomplishment just to get into the auditorium. I don't know Giddins personally and there were clearly so many fans of one kind or another in the audience who were obviously willing to stand on their heads to greet Sonny, Barbara and I decided to retreat to my office on the fourth floor quietly. I hope Barbara will get a chance one day to meet him. I wonder what she'll think?
Here's the link to the interview with Gary Giddins on the CUNY website at
http://www1.cuny.edu/portal_ur/news/radio/podcast/lecture_107.mp3