Addison Scurlock

Addison Norton Scurlock was born on the nineteenth of June 1883 at Fayetteville, North Carolina, the son of George Clay Scurlock — a Reconstruction-era lawyer and Republican Party official — and Nannie Howard Scurlock. He was raised in the Black middle-class community of post-Reconstruction Fayetteville.

He was moved with the Scurlock family to Washington, D.C. in 1900 at the appointment of his father to the United States Pension Office under the McKinley administration — and apprenticed at the Washington studio of the white portrait photographer Moses P. Rice from 1900 to 1904.

He opened the Scurlock Studio at 900 U Street NW Washington, D.C. in 1911 — the principal Black-owned portrait studio on the principal Black commercial corridor of the segregated capital. The Scurlock Studio operated at the U Street address from 1911 to 1972, across three generations of the Scurlock family.

He was named the principal photographer of Howard University in 1912 — and held the principal Howard University photographer position from 1912 to 1964. He produced across the fifty-two years at Howard the principal photographic record of the Howard University faculty, students, and ceremonial life — including the principal portraits of Howard president Mordecai Wyatt Johnson, Howard dean of the Law School Charles Hamilton Houston (placed in this archive), and the principal Howard graduating classes.

He produced the principal portrait record of the Washington, D.C. Black aristocracy across the segregation period — including the principal portraits of Mary Church Terrell, Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the principal Washington Black professional middle class.

He photographed the principal Washington ceremonial events across the period — including the National Negro Business League conventions, the principal Howard University commencements, and the principal U Street segregated entertainment venues.

He was succeeded at the Scurlock Studio by his sons George H. Scurlock and Robert S. Scurlock — who continued the principal Washington Black portrait tradition through the closing of the studio in 1972.

He died at Washington, D.C. on the seventeenth of December 1964 of natural causes, at eighty-one.

He is honored here as the principal portraitist of the Washington Black aristocracy.