Today In Black History: Remembering Morgan and Marvin Smith
Photographers and Artists for Harlem in the early 20th century
Issue #911 Today In Black History, Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Morgan and Marvin Smith, identical African-American twin brothers, were photographers and artists known for documenting the life of Harlem in the 1930s to 1950s. The twins were born to sharecroppers Charles and Allena Smith in Nicholasville, Kentucky, on February 16, 1910. The family moved to Lexington when Morgan and Marvin were 12 years old. While in high school, Morgan and Marvin Smith developed their artistic skills using oil paints and soaps to create sculptures.
Their passion moved them to Harlem, New York, in 1933, and they opened M. Smith Studios in 1937. The studio was located on 125th Street, next to the Apollo Theater, and became a meeting place for performers, artists, and fashion models, many of whom they had met as the Apollo's official photographers.
The Smith Brothers, using New Media-technological advances and artistic talent, excelled in video, sculpting, and painting when resources were difficult to acquire for African Americans. Additionally, their mission was to shine their lens on all shades of Blackness during a time when dark skin was considered by some as a handicap in the entertainment industry.
Together, they created incisive, poignant, and simply beautiful images defining Harlem from the 1930s to the 1950s. ''Harlem spread itself before the cameras of Morgan and Marvin Smith like a great tablecloth, and eagerly they went about devouring what it had to offer,'' Gordon Parks, the photographer, wrote in the forward to ''Harlem: The Vision of Morgan and Marvin Smith'' (University Press of Kentucky, 1998).
The brothers shot everybody and everything, from Jackie Robinson teaching his young son how to hold a baseball bat to Nat King Cole dancing at his wedding to W. E. B. DuBois recording a speech in a studio. The New York Black Yankees live forever in their team photograph, as does Maya Angelou as a lightly clad modern dancer, long before she became a published writer.
Morgan died in Manhattan on February 17, 1993, at the age of 83. Marvin died in Manhattan on November 12, 2003, at the age of 93.
Today In Black History
In 1619, twenty forcibly removed Africans landed in Jamestown, Virginia, aboard a Dutch ship, and were subsequently sold into slavery.
In 1830, Philadelphia minister Rev. Richard Allen chaired the first National Negro Convention.
In 1856, Wilberforce University was established in Wilberforce, Ohio.
In 1866, President Andrew Johnson, a Confederate sympathizer, issued Proclamation 157, declaring the “insurrection” in Texas over and officially ending the U.S. Civil War.
In 1908, the Congo Free State became the Belgian Congo.
In 1939, the National Negro Bowling Association was organized in Detroit, Michigan, and Wynston Brown became its first president.
In 1960, the African nation of Senegal broke from the French Mali Federation and declared its independence.
In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act, valued at about $1 billion.
In 1978, the FBI gave Alabama police Sgt. Thomas Cook (a known KKK leader) a Freedom Riders schedule, facilitating an attack by the KKK.
In 1993, genetic researcher Dr. David Satcher was named as the first Black director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
In 2020, Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) accepted the nomination for vice president, becoming the first U.S. woman of color on a major-party ticket, saying “…there is no vaccine for racism.”
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