At one point on Thursday, Sala Udin stood up and looked out at the crowd standing before him — all those people who, like him, were part of the unique community of Black artists and activists in the late 1960s and early ’70s — and said, “This is a remarkable event.”
Indeed, it was. A number of Udin’s contemporaries were in attendance. There were photographer Frank Hightower (a celebration of his work is what brought everyone together), sculptor Thaddeus Mosley, and legends such as Curtiss Porter and Bill Strickland. And that’s not the complete list.
The event’s purpose was to celebrate the acquisition of Hightower’s work, and that of his father, Frank Russell Hightower, by the Archives & Special Collections at the University of Pittsburgh Library System. In addition to his work as a photographer, Frank Hightower wrote plays and poetry.
Udin and Porter and others saw themselves in projections of Hightower’s black-and-white pictures shot more than half a century ago. There were images of playwrights and poets August Wilson, Rob Penny, Chawley Williams. Laurence Glasco, Pitt history professor and author, described Williams as the community’s greatest poet. He died in 2009.
Udin told the crowd he wishes he would have saved and preserved more from that era, stuff such as playbills, documents, publications. You never know when you’re taking part in a historic moment. That’s what makes Hightower’s pictures so important. They document an extraordinary movement and community many have yet to understand, or even acknowledge.
Steve is a photojournalist and writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he is currently on strike and working as a Union Progress co-editor. Reach him at smellon@unionprogress.com.