From 1936 to 1975 Charles “Teenie” Harris chronicled life in the black neighborhoods of the city for the Pittsburgh Courier, one of America’s oldest black newspapers. He was nicknamed “One Shot” because he rarely made his subjects sit for retakes, and he captured more than 80,000 images during his career, including the city’s most memorable baseball photographs.
A fine exhibition of his work, Teenie Harris Photographs: Baseball in Pittsburgh (March 22-September 22, 2014 at Carnegie Museum of Art), features shots of legendary players Josh Gibson, Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell. (Harris himself played ball for the local Crawfords when they were known as the Crawford Colored Giants.) Especially compelling are the significant local moments he memorialized, like the opening of the Uptown Little League with the city’s first racially integrated teams.
© 2006 Charles Teenie Harris Archive, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh
Two young baseball players standing on a ballfield, possibly in the Hill District c. 1953-1956. Gary Henderson, right, wears an Amvets Post 96 uniform. The other boy, whose name is not known, wears a uniform from Whiteside Road, one of Pittsburgh’s first public housing projects. It opened in the early 1950s and was razed in 2002.
