Life
Charles “Teenie” Harris, legendary photographer
“That was the black national paper of record at the time,” said Laurence Glasco, a professor of history at the University of Pittsburgh.
Many people stopped by the Courier offices because of its clout with African-Americans, Glasco said. Yet Harris neither pandered to nor looked down on celebrities, he added.
“He really didn’t have a cult of celebrity. He wouldn’t cross a street to shake a celebrity’s hand. He was interested in them, but he really saw them as just people. And that really comes out in his photographs,” Glasco said.
A young Muhammad Ali, for example, is shown picking up his mother and holding her in his arms.
“He had an equal opportunity lens,” recalled Teenie’s son, Charles Harris. “He just liked people.”
The partnership with the Courier was a perfect match, since its reporters and editors were also pushing for equal rights. And true to Pittsburgh traditions, Teenie Harris was a hard worker, on call virtually 24-hours a day.
“No matter what time it was, they could call. A lot of times he didn’t sleep,” his son said.
Louise Lippincott, the Carnegie Museum of Art Curator, worked closely with Harris in the last years of his life.
