Roland Freeman

Roland L. Freeman (July 27, 1936 – August 7, 2023) was an American photographer and award-winning documenter of Southern folk culture and African-American quilters.[1] He was the president of The Group for Cultural Documentation based in Washington, D.C.

Roland L. Freeman
Born(1936-07-27)July 27, 1936
Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.
DiedAugust 7, 2023(2023-08-07) (aged 87)
Washington, D.C., U.S.
Occupation(s)Photographer, quilter
Works
  • The Arabbers of Baltimore,
  • A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories
SpouseMarcia F. Freeman (m. 1968)
AwardsNational_Heritage_Fellowship

Websitehttp://www.tgcd.org/

Early life

Roland L. Freeman was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 27, 1936. As a youth, his future life's work was inspired when he discovered the Depression-era photography of Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava, which focused on raising social consciousness, as well as the work of Farm Security Administration photographers. When Freeman was 14, he met author and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who would also be a great influence on his subsequent career.[2]

Freeman served in the US Air Force from 1954 to 1958.[3] He began taking photographs in the Washington, D.C. area in 1963, inspired by the March on Washington.[2]

In 1968, he not only participated in but also documented the Poor People's Campaign and the Mule Train[4] trip from Marks, Mississippi, to the nation's capital.[2]

Freeman worked as a stringer for Time and Magnum Photos, including coverage as a White House photographer.[2] In 1997, Freeman was named the Eudora Welty Visiting Professor of Southern Studies at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.[5]

Career as photodocumentarian

In 1970, he co-directed the Mississippi FolkLife Project for the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. In 1972, he became a research associate there.

In that capacity, Freeman photographed staff at the White House, including Mrs. Lillian Rogers Parks, who worked there for 30 years. Several of Freeman's photographs of African Americans at the White House were included in official White House webpages[6] and in a Smithsonian Institution exhibition.[7]

"While There is Still Time"

Freeman worked for years on a self-assigned project "While There Is Still Time," a study of Black culture throughout the African Diaspora. He used the camera as a tool to research, document and interpret the continuity of traditional African-American folklife practices. This work is generally done in close collaboration with folklorists, historians, sociologists and community activists, often in methodologically innovative ways that have been integral to his contributions to the work of photographers of his generation.[8]

Influence on American quilt history

Freeman spent more than 20 years photographing African-American quilters and guilds. He collected biographic information about the quilters' lives and their motivations for quiltmaking. He also documented collectors of African-American-made quilts.

A Communion of the Spirits was a landmark American quilt history book, as no one else prior to Freeman had performed a national survey of Black quilters. The book covered 38 states and the District of Columbia. Quilt guilds documented in A Communion of the Spirits include: The African American Quilters of Baltimore, the Freedom Quilting Bee of Alberta, Alabama, the African American Quilters of Los Angeles, and more. Quilt collectors included Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall.

An exhibit of Freeman's quilt photographs are in the permanent collection of the Smith Robertson Museum in Jackson, Mississippi.

In 2008, he organized a quilt exhibition at the Historical Society of Washington, D.C. to celebrate the inauguration of President Obama. The exhibit was supposed to run from January 11 – 31, 2009, but it was extended until July 2009.[9][10]

Death

Freeman died at his home in Washington, D.C., on August 7, 2023, at the age of 87.[11]

Published works

Books
  • Folkroots: Images of Mississippi Black Folklife, 1974–1976 (1977)[12]
  • Roland L. Freeman, a Baltimore Portfolio, 1968–1979 (1979)[13]
  • Southern Roads/City Pavements: Photographs of Black Americans (1981)[14]
  • The Arabbers of Baltimore (1989)[15]
  • Margaret Walker's 'For My People': A Tribute (1992)[16]
  • A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories (1996)[17]
  • The Mule Train: A Journey of Hope Remembered (1998)[18]
  • A Tribute to Worth Long (2006)[19]

Exhibition catalogs

Contributions
  • Piney Woods School: an Oral History (1982)[26]
  • Inside Out: Photographs from Lorton (1986)[27]
  • Drawing Our Worlds Together (1998)[28]
  • Fire In My Bones (2000)[29]

Awards and honors
  • In 1970, Freeman became the first photographer to be awarded a Young Humanist Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Humanities.[4]
  • He has received two Masters of Photography Visual Arts Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, one in 1982 and another in 1991.
  • He received the Living Legend Award for Distinguished Achievement in Photography from the National Black Arts Festival in 1994.[4]
  • In 1997, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from Millsaps College.
  • In 2001, the book Fire In My Bones, to which Freeman contributed the photographs, earned the Chicago Folklore Prize, an annual award which represents the most outstanding book in folklore.[30]
  • He was a recipient of a 2007 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the NEA, which is the United States government's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts.[31][1]

Collections

The Roland L. Freeman Collection was acquired in 2023 by the Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The collection, a gift from the Kohler Foundation, is part of the Southern Folklife Collection and consists of Freeman's papers, nearly 24,000 slides, 10,000 photographic prints, 400,000 negatives and 9,000 contact sheets.[32]

Also in 2023, the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Mississippi acquired 131 quilts collected by Roland Freeman illustrating quilt-making by African American women, many from Southern American communities, from Liberia and South Africa. The quilt collection was a gift from the Kohler Foundation.[33][34]

In 1991, the Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired ten black and white prints by Roland L. Freeman as a gift from George H. Dalsheimer.[35]

Roland Freeman’s African American Expressive Culture in Philadelphia Project is housed at the Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division and includes 737 enlarged contact sheets full of images of African-American everyday life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the late 1980s.[36][37]

References
  1. "National Endowment for the Arts Statement on the Death of National Heritage Fellow Roland Freeman". Public Now. August 15, 2023. Retrieved August 16, 2023.
  2. "Roland Freeman: Photo Documentarian, Author, and Exhibit Curator". www.arts.gov. National Endowment for the Arts. n.d. Retrieved January 10, 2021.
  3. Riggs, Thomas, ed. (1997). St. James Guide to Black Artists. Detroit, Michigan: St. James Press in association with the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. pp. 201–202. ISBN 9781558622203. LCCN 97-3068. OCLC 36470125.
  4. "Photographer Roland Freeman is keynote speaker April 9". Inside ASU. Arkansas State University. April 7, 2010. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  5. Ramsey, Bets (March 20, 1997). "Freeman exhibit to travel". Chattanooga Times Free Press. Chattanooga, Tennessee. p. D6.
  6. "A Working Family". The Working White House. WHHA Exhibits. n.d. Archived from the original on October 4, 2009. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  7. "White House Working Family". Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. n.d. Archived from the original on August 22, 2006. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  8. "Roland L. Freeman". The Group for Cultural Documentation. 2002. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  9. "Beltway Happenings". George Washington University. January 21, 2009. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  10. "Quilts for Obama: An Exhibit Celebrating the Inauguration of Our 44th President". George Washington University. n.d. Retrieved January 12, 2021.
  11. Murphy, Brian (August 17, 2023). "Roland L. Freeman, whose photos chronicled Black life, dies at 87". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 16, 2023.
  12. Freeman, Roland (1977). Folkroots: Images of Mississippi Black Folklife (1974–1976). Jackson, Mississippi: Mississippi Department of Archives and History. OCLC 4014482.
  13. Freeman, Roland L. (1979). Roland L. Freeman, a Baltimore Portfolio, 1968–1979: A Black Photographer Looks At His Hometown. Catonsville, Maryland: University of Maryland Baltimore County Library. LCCN 79-64296. OCLC 6916224.
  14. Freeman, Roland L. (1981). Southern Roads/City Pavements: Photographs of Black Americans. New York: International Center of Photography. ISBN 9780933642041. LCCN 81-80577. OCLC 7776297.
  15. Freeman, Roland L. (1989). The Arabbers of Baltimore (1st ed.). Centreville, Maryland: Tidewater Publishers. ISBN 9780870333972. LCCN 88-40561. OCLC 19353600.
  16. Walker, Margaret (1992). Margaret Walker's 'For My People': A Tribute. photographs by Roland L. Freeman. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9780878056132. LCCN 92-28492. OCLC 26353197.
  17. Freeman, Roland L. (1996). A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories. foreword by Cuesta Benberry. Nashville, Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press. ISBN 9781558534254. LCCN 96-26202. OCLC 34943313.
  18. Freeman, Roland L. (1998). Levine, David B. (ed.). The Mule Train: A Journey of Hope Remembered. Nashville, Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press. ISBN 9781558536609. LCCN 98-23252. OCLC 39157624.
  19. Freeman, Roland L. (2006). A Tribute to Worth Long: Still on the Case, a Pioneer's Continuing Commitment. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage; Group for Cultural Documentation. LCCN 2013-432360. OCLC 183190495.
  20. Freeman, Roland L. (1977). City Pavements, Country Roads. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Antioch University. LCCN 78-53508. OCLC 5128697.
  21. Freeman, Roland L. (1981). Something to Keep You Warm: the Roland Freeman Collection of Black American quilts from the Mississippi Heartland. Jackson, Mississippi: Department of Archives and History, Mississippi State Historical Museum. ISBN 9780938896319. LCCN 81-620010. OCLC 8452156.
  22. Perry, Regenia A.; Freeman, Roland L. (1988). More Than Just Something to Keep You Warm: The Afro-American Folk Art Tradition. Paramus, New Jersey: Bergen Museum of Art and Science. OCLC 181349505.
  23. Stand By Me: African American Expressive Culture in Philadelphia. exhibit curated by Roland Freeman. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, Office of Folklife Programs. 1989. LCCN 90-119086. OCLC 21153880.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  24. Some Thing of Value: Images of African and African-American Folklife. exhibit curated by Roland Freeman. Atlanta, Georgia: APEX Museum. 1992. OCLC 52473903.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  25. Barilleaux, René Paul, ed. (2004). Journey of the Spirit: the Art of Gwendolyn A. Magee. essay by Roland L. Freeman. Jackson, Mississippi: Mississippi Museum of Art. ISBN 9781887422093. LCCN 2004-55923. OCLC 55947973.
  26. Harrison, Alferdteen (1982). Piney Woods School: an Oral History. photographs by Roland Freeman (Print-on-demand ed.). Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781578068760. LCCN 82-11150. OCLC 769850593.
  27. Ruckman, Karen (1986). Inside Out: Photographs from Lorton. curated by Roland L. Freeman. Washington, D.C.: Lorton Photography Workshop. OCLC 79153880.
  28. Plotkin, Joel (1998). Drawing Our Worlds Together: an Overview of the Young Person's Cultural Exchange Program and a Gallery of Artwork from the Exhibits. collaborators David B. Levine, Judith H. Katz and Roland L. Freeman. Washington, D.C.: Group for Cultural Documentation. OCLC 57398896.
  29. Hinson, Glenn (2000). Fire In My Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel. photographs by Roland L. Freeman. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812235289. OCLC 247143942.
  30. "Folklorist wins international book prize". The Chapel Hill News. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. February 11, 2001. p. A7.
  31. "NEA National Heritage Fellowships 2007". arts.gov. National Endowment for the Arts. Archived from the original on May 21, 2020. Retrieved January 9, 2021.
  32. "Library acquires archive of Roland L. Freeman, photographer of Black life in Southern U.S. | UNC-Chapel Hill". The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. March 20, 2023. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
  33. Velie, Elaine (March 16, 2023). "A Photographer's Love Affair With Black Southern Quilt-Making". Hyperallergic. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
  34. "Mississippi Museum of Art Announces Acquisition of Major Collection of Quilts". ArtfixDaily. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
  35. "Roland Freeman Artworks | Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery". americanart.si.edu. Retrieved August 10, 2023.
  36. Orbach Natanson, Barbara (August 28, 2020). "Reflecting on Roland Freeman's African American Expressive Culture in Philadelphia Project | Picture This". The Library of Congress. Retrieved August 13, 2023.
  37. ""Freeman, Roland L., 1936-" - Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Library of Congress)". www.loc.gov. Retrieved August 13, 2023.
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