Using Google Images as my time machine, here is some of what I saw in 1949:
Click on images to enlarge or see the film; click on links to go to posts on the given subject:
Dorothy Dandridge in a glamour photo, circa 1949:
Lena Horne and Duke Ellington on the cover of the October 1949 issue of Ebony:
Jackie Robinson baseball card:
Paul Robeson and W.E.B. Du Bois at the World at the Peace Congress in Paris, April 20th 1949:
Josephine Baker was in Paris:
Richard Wright was in Paris. Here he is with his daughter Julia:
James Baldwin was in Paris too, having just moved there in 1948. I could not find any pictures of him in 1949, but I did find a picture of the cafe near where he lived, Cafe de Flore, where he would write “Go Tell it on the Mountain” (1953):

FRANCE – 1949: Paris. The terrace of the Flore cafe. March, 1949. RV-88278 (Photo by Roger Viollet/Getty Images)
Chloe Wofford in high school in Lorain, Ohio. In 44 years she will win the Nobel Prize for Literature:
“Annie Allen” by Gwendolyn Brooks, the first book by a Black person to win a Pulitzer Prize:
“Uncle Tom’s Children” (1938) by Richard Wright, now in paperback:
A scene from “Souls of Sin”:
The 1949 movie poster for “Pinky”, about a light-skinned Black woman who passes for White:
“Field Hand” by Samella Lewis:
“Trenton Six” by Charles Wilbert White:
Fort Scott, Kansas by Gordon Parks:
Chicago by Stanley Kubrick:
Harlem by Richard Avedon:Dining-car cooks:
Tons of Black people were still sharecroppers, but it seems they fell out of fashion with photographers in the 1940s (they were huge in the 1930s). Photography, like writing, seems to be a largely middle-class medium.
Howard University:
The Andante Club, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania:
Wigs (natural hairstyles were not yet a thing):
Part of an ad for a skin-lightening bleaching cream:
White people in blackface:
The 1949 edition of the Green Book, which listed restaurants, hotels, etc, which would serve Blacks:
A map of civil rights laws. Notice how Jim Crow extends to Arizona:
Paradise Park For Coloured People in Florida: I am not sure if this picture is from 1949, but it probably is since that is when the park opened:
A kindergarten class in Topeka, Kansas:
A White family standing in front of their new house in Levittown, a suburb of New York City where no Black person was allowed to live, an example of a sundown town:
August 27th, Westchester County, just north of New York City: people shouting insults at carloads of concert-goers who have come to see Paul Robeson. This will turn into the Peekskill Riot:
A Klan rally in Alabama:
A race riot in St Louis, Missouri:
And, of course, Times Square:
My mother says that 1949, at the time, seemed completely ordinary. In writing this post I see what she means. It is like when you become used to hearing an accent – you stop hearing it.
– Abagond, 2017.
See also:
- Times Square through time
- 1949 according to this blog – the same sort of exercise, but done with this blog, not Google Images
- Reading the Mechanical Bride
- Mark Matcho
- June 29th 1916 – what I could find out about that day from the Internet
- White Default
- What if there were a Black Default?
553
Integration of the US Air Force began.
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The Fort Scott, Kansas by Gordon Parks image brought back memories of my paternal uncles with their faces alternately stern and cracking jokes; always clenching an unlit cigar between their teeth.
The Montreal image of White people in Blackface makes me think of how thoroughly White people dehumanized (and still dehumanize) Black people. Even French Canadians, many of whom never met a single Black person, found it amusing to mock and humiliate Black people.
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Like today. Just goes to show, people can get used to anything.
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Nice post!
@afrofem
French Canadians are among the most white supremacist in Canada, don’t be fooled by propaganda to the contrary.
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Around the same time. Well, this is 1947, so its kind of related. The first weaponized hurricane. Ominous stirrings foreshadowing Katrina and Sandy.
This story is not theory, and has been told before, namely in The Brothers Vonnegut – Science and Fiction in the House of Magic, by Ginger Strand.
http://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/03/16/first-weaponized-hurricane-caused-widespread-destruction-1947/
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an scribh aka lord of mirkwood once defended French Canadian racists’ love of blackface, saying of one incident: “Nothing but respect and admiration for Subban was intended. And because of the influence of French republicanism’s color-blind ideology, French Québécois thought nothing of it – it was just an actor portraying a character – a respected and admired character at that.”
Absolutely disgusting.
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You fell off of the tracks a couple of days ago with that Masina crap. However, I must now place you upright on the tracks and reconfigure you once again. (smh)
Absolutely wonderful pictures depicting Black folks as ordinary people prior to losing our g-d damn minds (figuratively speaking of course), and weren’t worried about whether white folks liked us or not. Precluding the following: Sundown town; Peekskill riot; St. Louis riot; Blackface and a few other anomalies depicting white people once again as being truly unevolved.
The stillness of pictures never fails to give us a powerful glimpse of the zeitgeist of the time period captured!
PS (whisper): As you approach the curve, slow down so as to avoid falling off of the tracks.
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Good post
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@Herneith
I quite familiar with French Canadian White Supremacy. I have met quite a few. One French Canuck once sniffed to me about how pure laine her family was. Then she went on and on about how being “naturally fair” (blond) made her family a cut above the rest of her neighbors. Insufferable was a mild term to describe her sense of self-importance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_laine
The irony is that Anglophone Canadians consider French Canadians as little more than White Tr@sh. Perhaps that explains why Ms. Pure Laine and others are so anti-Semitic and anti-Black (with particular animus toward Haitians).
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@Afrofem: Insightful post about French white Canadians and their practice of White Supremacy.
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Abagond, you definitely have Black and New York City default mentalities, even though you make your blog somewhat universal with British-style spellings and metric units and so forth.
If you didn’t love NYC so much, you would actually make a good Bostonian (because you love to learn, are very community-minded, and have a sarcastic sense of humor). You definitely don’t seem like the stereotypical Wall Street type that is often associated with NYC.
Maybe you’re meant to live in Connecticut because it’s between New York and Massachusetts 😉
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About French Canadians: many of them have traditionally had self-hating attitudes about their partially Amerindian ancestry. Having light coloring was prized for a long time in the Quebec area and probably still is to some degree. Also, when the Quebecois immigrated to the US, WASPs and assimilated groups called them “French N-words”. Older Americans from French Canadian backgrounds will still make comments like, “You’re lucky to have pale skin” to their relatives.
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Pure Laine my behind! Pure as the driven snow in July more like!
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@ nomad “Like today. Just goes to show, people can get used to anything.”
Believe me nobody was used to anything. Every effort was being made to change. More in the north then in the south, because of the harsh grip that the southern structure held on the people.
People could be thrown out of their homes with no recourse. The south was still basically a agricultural based social system. In the major cities the police held great power.
The Blacks would be leaders were just starting to finish their education on the GI bill, after WW II.
Everything was beginning!!!!!!!!!
President Truman had ordered the integration of all military forces in 1948 and the biggest social experience was beginning.
https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=84
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=78208
https://brainly.com/question/2845067
http://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2011/03/25/134769323/black_aviators
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/marian-anderson-sings-at-lincoln-memorial
As early as the 1930’s Black were at work, wherever they could, attempting to break the segregation and denial of fair treatment.
Please do not ever say anyone was used to anything, because you have not studied your history.
Many Blacks were happy with the segregation because they had high positions in the Black economic and social system. Even among that group there were those who were adding their support to the integration movement.
When did it begin: When WW II was over segregation received its fatal clobbering! After that it has all been a matter of time and effort put forth by those that wish to participate.
The struggle continues!
Oberlin College
The college and community thrived on progressive causes and social justice. Among Oberlin’s earliest graduates were women and African Americans. While Oberlin was coeducational from its founding in 1833, the college regularly admitted African American students beginning in 1835, after trustee and abolitionist, the Rev. John Keep, cast the deciding vote to allow them entry. Women were not admitted to the baccalaureate program, which granted bachelor’s degrees, until 1837. Prior to that, they received diplomas from what was called the Ladies Course. The college admitted its first group of women in 1837: Caroline Mary Rudd, Elizabeth Prall, Mary Hosford, and Mary Fletcher Kellogg, although Kellogg did not complete her degree in 1841 along with the others.
Just a very small picture of the many people who were engaged in the upward mobility of the African American.
Remember Crispus Attucks!
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@Mary Burrell This “Pure Laine” thing sounds to me more like small-nation tribalism than White supremacism.
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“Believe me nobody was use to anything.” – Allen Shaw
Are you inebriated right now?
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“Believe me nobody was use to anything.” – Allen Shaw
well I’m going to take the word of somebody who was actually there to feel the zeitgeist. abagond’s mom. everybody’s mom.
be that as it may, weve certainly gotten used to a lot of sh-t now. daily police shootings. being sprayed from the upper atmosphere like roaches. the cia choosing our presidents and controlling our press, catastrophic regime change wars, brainwashing about 911. a black misleadership class.
wweve gotten used to a lot of things.
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we got used to a black man in the white mans role of bombing brown people.
like I said. people can get used to anything.
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“The struggle continues.” – Allen Shaw
WHAT, I thought proclaimed we were free in either 1864 or 1865 and then again by a false prophet by the name of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1965?
Oh well, … back to the hot ass field, pick some more cotton and then wait for the next proclamation.
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I’m up in Westchester, NY now. Glad it’s calmed down a bit.
A bit.
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For a non-american person, your blog is really a blast and specifically this post. 1949 in some ways still seems so close, it is really stunning.
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