vintageblackglamour:

Nora Holt, photographed with a marionette by Carl Van Vechten on August 29, 1937, was first African American to earn a master’s degree in music (Chicago Musical College, 1918) She was a music critic for two preeminent black newspapers, the Chicago Defender and the New York Amsterdam News. Married five (or more) times, she was also a regular in the gossip columns thanks to her scandalous love life. Ms. Holt was also said to be the inspiration for the “Lasca Sartoris” character in Van Vechten’s infamous, controversial novel, “N****r Heaven.” She died in Los Angeles in 1974. Photo: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Nora Holt, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1937.

vieilles-annonces:

Carl Van Vechten and Nora Holt at Yale, June 22, 1955 on Flickr.

Carl Van Vechten and Nora Holt at Yale, June 22, 1955. Photo by Saul Mauriber.

(via: vieilles_annonces, flickr)
(source: Beinecke Library, Yale. Carl Van Vechten Collection)

vintageblackglamour:

Nora Holt, photographed by James Marquis Connely in 1930.  Never easily definable, the Harlem Renaissance mainstay was the first black person to earn a master’s degree in music, a composer and a music critic, the owner of a Los Angeles beauty parlor in the 1940s and producer of her own weekly New York radio show, Nora Holt’s Concert Showcase, in the 1950s.

Original caption: “Josephine Baker (L) receiving hug fr. columnist & friend Nora Ray Holt in her dressing room after her show at the Strand theater during her US tour.” Photo: Alfred Eisenstaedt. Life magazine. Mar 10, 1951

SCREAMED when I saw this picture!

(Source: LIFE)

holdthisphoto:

Nora Holt, 1932

• by Carl Van Vechten

Nora Holt will *always* get a reblog

(via backtothefiveanddime)

vintageblackglamour:

Nora Holt, one of my favorite iconoclasts, photographed by Carl Van Vechten on March 18, 1932.

Miss Holt will always be a reblog!