Charles "Teenie" Harris

Charles Henry Harris was born on the second of July 1908 at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of William E. Harris — a Pittsburgh boilermaker — and Ella Mae Harris. He was raised in the Hill District of central Pittsburgh — the principal Black neighbourhood of mid-twentieth-century Pittsburgh.

He was self-taught in photography from the late 1920s at the principal Pittsburgh photo-darkroom community of the period — and operated the principal Harris Studio at Wylie Avenue at Pittsburgh from 1932 to 1936.

He was hired in 1936 as staff photographer of the Pittsburgh Courier — the principal Black-owned weekly newspaper of the principal mid-twentieth-century American Black press — and held the principal Courier staff photographer position from 1936 to the closing of the Courier in 1966 and continued freelance to the principal Courier successor publications through 1975.

He produced across the thirty-nine years at the Courier — and the subsequent freelance period — the principal photographic record of the principal African American Pittsburgh community of the mid-twentieth century. The principal Harris archive — approximately eighty thousand negatives at his death — is at this day the principal documentary photographic record of the principal Hill District community across the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.

He was the principal Pittsburgh sports photographer of the Pittsburgh Crawfords and Homestead Grays Negro League baseball teams across the 1930s and 1940s — including the principal portraits of Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige, and the principal Negro League Pittsburgh community.

He was the principal Pittsburgh jazz photographer of the principal mid-twentieth-century Pittsburgh jazz tradition — including the principal portraits of Mary Lou Williams, Billy Eckstine, Lena Horne, and the principal Pittsburgh-Hill-District jazz clubs of the 1940s and 1950s.

He was the principal Pittsburgh civil rights photographer of the principal post-Brown Pittsburgh civil rights movement — including the principal portraits of Martin Luther King Jr. at Pittsburgh in the early 1960s, the principal Pittsburgh Black Power organisations of the late 1960s, and the principal Pittsburgh fair-housing protests of the early 1970s.

His principal Harris archive was acquired by the Carnegie Museum of Art at Pittsburgh in 2001 — at the principal post-Harris-estate archival settlement — and is at this day the principal mid-twentieth-century African American photographic archive at the Carnegie.

He died at Pittsburgh on the twelfth of June 1998 of natural causes, at eighty-nine.

He is honored here as the principal photographer of the African American Pittsburgh community.