In 1946 Wayne F. Miller was a little lost. He’d recently completed a tour with a navy combat photo unit led by Edward Steichen in which he’d been one of the first westerners to photograph the destruction of Hiroshima. Then he’d won a $3,000 Guggenheim award to document “The Way of Life of the Northern Negro.” He’d moved his family to 95th and Jeffery. But Miller, who is white and grew up near Broadway and Montrose, had never actually set foot in the city’s Black Belt, whose center was 47th Street and South Parkway (now King Drive).
For the most part, Miller had easy access. “I believe that the subjects I was photographing realized I wasn’t trying to criticize things or snoop into their lives, but that I was just another person around,” he says. “Just about anywhere I went I was left alone or welcomed, and it was just marvelous.”
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Miller also did magazine work at that time and taught at the Institute of Design. For Ebony he documented female impersonators at Joe’s DeLuxe Club and took pictures of a “reefer party.”
“I didn’t want to get beat up,” he says. “And I didn’t want to start photographing that sort of thing unless I knew there was a story there.” He says he “was pushed a little bit” but not harmed. “They were throwing rocks at this place. I think one of them shot a rifle or something at the window. There was a baby inside, and the glass went all over the top of the baby’s bed. There were rocks and threats. You don’t know what would have happened if it wasn’t quieted down.”
“They came at me,” says Miller. “So I took the camera from around my neck and threw it 20 feet or so to Vernon, and he ran and I ran too.”
“Everyone is always looking for photos of what life was like in Bronzeville,” says Flug. “Most of the time, when people take photos they take them of individuals or celebrities or weddings or graduations or of their families. There aren’t often collections of neighborhood life and people at work, people in bars and street scenes, people in church or going to entertainment events.”
