Olden Lens

For Louis Armstrong, struggle marked many of his early years. He experienced much poverty, at times walking around barefoot because a pair of shoes was too expensive. And then, of course, there was racism, including one incident in which Louis and his friends were shot at while swimming in a pond.

There were also joys to his life growing up in early 20th century New Orleans. One of the most significant was music. New Orleans was arguably the city of music in America at the time. And an enthralled young Louis wanted to perform. Unable to purchase instruments, he began singing at around ten years old and performing with a group on the streets.

He and the group showed talent, and listeners showed the kids appreciation with a bit of money after a performance. About what he earned, Louis said, "I would make a bee line for home and dump my share into mama's lap." That money helped support his mother and sister and allowed Louis to buy some things for himself.

Life went through an important change for Louis when he was thirteen. One night, he took a gun loaded with blanks from a man his mother was dating. Out with his friends, he fired the gun to scare someone firing at him. Louis was arrested and sent to a reform school. The school, run by a former Army captain, focused on rules and discipline. But while the days were hard, the goal was to help the kids. One of the activities offered was band.

Louis was invited to join the band after the instructor heard him sing. He was given a cornet, and in this band, Louis thrived. Looking back in later years, he would remark on this experience,

"I do believe that my whole success goes back to that time I was arrested as a wayward boy at the age of thirteen. Because then I had to quit running around and began to learn something. Most of all, I began to learn music."

After returning home from the reform school, Louis attempted to earn a living by working in the neighborhood, shoveling and selling coal. But he was small, and doing physical labor that paid on work completed didn't amount to much in income. And Louis wanted to focus more on music.

In 1918, another important shift came in Louis's life: he joined Fate Marable's orchestra, playing on riverboats along the Mississippi River. "What a thrill that was!" Louis would say about being chosen for the position.

Next came Chicago, where he moved in 1922 to grow his career further. Here, he had financial stability and ample time to practice. His skills improved, and soon, more opportunities came to be. Louis was now in high demand. As one biographer wrote about Louis's audience appeal,

"Audiences especially delighted in Armstrong's singing. He did not have a pretty voice. In fact, he rasped. But he had an uncanny knack for landing squarely in the middle of every note, and his vocal style was lit with the same spontaneity that shone through his trumpet solos."

Louis continued to grow in his career, becoming known worldwide and winning many awards. He was so special that a fellow musician remarked, "Louis Armstrong's station in the history of jazz is umimpeachable. If it weren't for him, there wouldn't be any of us."

Portrait of a family. Georgia, USA, circa 1900.

Portrait of an Italian family at Ellis Island, 1905.

Portrait of the Stevens Family. Linn Creek, Missouri, circa 1905.

Photograph of a telephone switchboard operator, 1925.

Vinnie Ream Hoxie was just 18 years old when the U.S. Congress selected her to sculpt a memorial statue of President Abraham Lincoln in 1866. Her selection marked the first time the U.S. government commissioned a female artist.

Though Vinnie was so young, she was experienced, and this would be her second sculpture of the President. The first one she worked on a couple of years prior, spending about five months on the project, finishing the sculpture shortly after President Lincoln's assassination.

Senators, generals, and many others visited Vinnie while she worked on the memorial statue in a basement studio inside the Capital building. Vinnie finished the statue of the President in 1871. The work was met with high praise.

Despite continuing to face criticism due to her gender, Vinnie received more commissions. She continued to sculpt throughout her life while also taking up social causes, marrying, and having a son. She passed away on November 20, 1914.

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Note: the photograph is of Vinnie with her first sculpture of Abraham Lincoln.

Portrait of a woman, USA, circa 1890.

Portrait of a Samoan woman, 1906.

Alice Augusta Ball was a chemist who developed a treatment for leprosy after becoming the first woman and African-American to graduate with a master's degree from the University of Hawaii. Her solution would last as the most effective treatment for more than a quarter-century.

Alice died young, at only 24, in 1916. But she left a lasting legacy.

Rosa Parks at the Poor Peoples March, 1968.

People said Nat Love was one who never got discouraged; he always kept a positive attitude. �

Born enslaved in 1854 in Tennessee, from a young age Nat was a leader, hard worker and desired to help others. After his father and brother-in-law passed away while Nat was in his teens, he took on the responsibility of taking care of both households.�

But he also longed to explore the world. When his uncle came to stay with the family, Nat felt the time was right to leave. He went west, becoming a cowboy first in Texas and then in Arizona.

After living the cowboy life for eighteen years, Nat settled down towards the late 19th century. He married and became a Pullman porter overseeing sleeping cars in Denver.

In the early 20th century, he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a courier and guard for a security company. And where he published his autobiography, "Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as 'Deadwood Dick,' by Himself."

A spinner and her spinning wheel. County Galway, Ireland, circa 1890.

"What will our soldiers think when they return to the university and find that they are required to learn at the feet of a woman?"

Such was the response of a faculty member at the idea of Emmy Noether joining the University of Göttingen to teach mathematics in 1915. So instead of receiving the title she deserved, Emmy spent years teaching courses often under the name of a male faculty member. It was his course; she was an assistant, was the official structure. And she wasn't paid for her work. Her family financially supported her. In 1919 she was permitted to teach officially, and she began receiving a small salary in 1922.

As a teacher, Emmy was known to speak loud and fast, for being generous, thoughtful. She cared deeply for her students, without vanity nor ego, promoting them and their work over anything else. Her students in turn followed her "as if following the Pied Piper." And while Emmy excelled as a teacher, she also made numerous significant contributions to research in mathematics and physics.

“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.”

- Albert Einstein

“By the time I had got two or three hundred feet off the ground, I knew I had to fly,” said Amelia Earhart of her first flying experience.

Amelia had her first experience with aviation shortly after high school when she met aviators while working in a Canadian military hospital during WWI.

Soon Amelia was a college student at Columbia intending to go to medical school. Despite doing well in her classes, she spent a lot of her time adventuring, “I was familiar with all the forbidden underground passageways which connected the different buildings of the University. I think I explored every nook and cranny possible. I have sat in the lap of the gilded statue which decorates the library steps, and I was probably the most frequent visitor on the top of the library dome. I mean the top.”

She didn’t stay long at Columbia. Shortly after, she dropped out to join her parents, who had moved to California.

Later that year came the day when Amelia got her first taste of flying. At an airfield in Long Beach, with her father providing the $10 fee, Amelia climbed into the airplane for a ten-minute flight that would change the course of her life.

She was now determined to become a pilot. She cropped her hair short, bought a leather jacket that she then slept in for three days to make it look more worn out, and she took a bus, only to then walk four more miles to get to the flight school.

The flight school was run by Anita “Neta” Snook, a pioneer female aviator who was the first woman to run her own aviation business. When Amelia arrived for her first flying lesson, she had just one question for Neta, “I want to fly. Will you teach me?”

Neta took Amelia on as a student. “I’ll never forget the day she and her father came to the field. I liked her on sight,” Neta would later say of her first time meeting Amelia.

Amelia purchased her first plane six months after her first lesson. And within a couple of years, she set the world altitude record for women at 14,000 feet.

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy at the Taj Mahal. Agra, India, 1962.