Wave Staff and Wire Reports
NORTHRIDGE — Cal State Northridge has received nearly $70,000 to digitize part of its collection of photographs and other materials by Vera Jackson, a pioneering photographer who documented Black life in Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s.
The grant from the John Randolph Hayes and Dora Hayes Foundation will allow the university’s Tom & Ethel Bradley Center to digitize, research and catalog 2,550 items from Jackson’s collection, including photographs, film reels and personal and professional papers.
The materials will be made available to the public through the Bradley Center’s digital collection at CSUN’s University Library.
Jackson was the only woman to work as a staff photographer for the California Eagle during the 1940s. Her photographs documented weddings, social events, protests, businesses and everyday life in Los Angeles’ Black community.
Her subjects included entertainers Hattie McDaniel, Dorothy Dandridge and Lena Horne, baseball player Jackie Robinson and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune.
“The Vera Jackson Collection includes both photographic images and personal papers that document, from the perspective of a Black female photographer, important events and people in the Black community of Los Angeles during the 1940s and ’50s,” said José Luis Benavides, a journalism professor and director of the Bradley Center. “This project will make these unique and rare images digitally available to the public and support research that enhances understanding of Los Angeles history.”
The 2,550 items selected for digitization represent about 25% of the collection, Benavides said.
“Most of this work will focus on Jackson’s negatives and prints from her days as a press and studio photographer in the 1940s,” he said. “We plan to add items from her personal and professional papers so the public can learn more about her unique professional and personal life as a Black female photographer in Los Angeles.”
Jackson was hired by California Eagle publisher and editor Charlotta Bass and worked primarily with the newspaper’s society editor, Jesse Mae Brown. Her assignments included photographing prominent members of the Black community, celebrities and civil rights activities, according to the university.
Her work has been exhibited at museums and galleries across the country, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the California African American Museum.
Jackson’s photographs also were featured in Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s book “Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers” and Stanley Nelson’s documentary “The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords.”
Benavides said making the collection available online would allow people beyond Los Angeles to study Jackson’s photographs and the community she documented.
“Vera Jackson’s images are much more than a photographic record,” Benavides said. “They are also a form of artistic expression of a pioneer photographer helping us appreciate and better understand life in Black Los Angeles.”
