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Digitized materials in the Howard Morehead photographs and papers can be accessed online via the UCLA Library Digital Collections platform. Portions of the collection are unprocessed. Audiovisual and audio materials are unavailable for access. Please contact UCLA Library Special Collections at AskLSC@library.ucla.edu for more information.

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About Howard Morehead

Howard Morehead (1926 - 2003) was an African American photographer who captured iconic photos of jazz greats like Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles and Miles Davis, as well as international leaders such as Nelson Mandela.

Morehead was born in Topeka, Kansas and briefly enlisted in the Army Air Corps, training to join the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II. Upon the war’s conclusion and his discharge from the military, he moved to Los Angeles and studied photography at the Los Angeles City College.

After earning his degree, Morehead joined the staff of the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper and began freelancing for several magazines. Eventually, he became Johnson Publishing Company’s first West Coast staff photographer, working on stories and covers for Ebony and Jet. As a fan of jazz music, Morehead photographed many important musicians throughout his career, as well as actors and politicians.

Morehead’s interest in glamour photography and his desire to fight racial discrimination pushed him to found the Miss Bronze L.A. beauty contest in 1958. The contest later became the Miss Bronze California pageant, which gave African American women the opportunity to compete.

In 1970, Morehead started working for KTLA-TV Channel 5, becoming the first African American staff cameraman for a Los Angeles television station. A year later, he moved to KABC-TV Channel 7, where he worked for 17 years as a cameraman before retiring.

Throughout the 1990s, Morehead continued documenting the Los Angeles jazz scene. Although he passed away in July of 2003, his photographs continue to offer insightful glimpses into the Los Angeles jazz scene from the mid-1950s through the 1990s.

About the Collection

This collection primarily consists of photographs taken by Morehead, mostly of musicians and Los Angeles venues from the mid-1950s through the 1990s. Subjects include Ray Charles, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday and other musicians, as well as actors and politicians such as Diahann Carroll, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

There are also voluminous examples of glamour photography, ranging from chaste portraiture to provocative nudity. Many of these photographs were related to the Miss Bronze beauty contests organized by Morehead.

The collection also includes some of Morehead’s personal and business papers, books, videotapes and sound recordings. Included are Morehead’s correspondence with Playboy, which repeatedly rejected his attempts to sell photographs of women of color to the magazine, and documents pertaining to his employment at KABC-TV, where he was often reprimanded, leading to his filing of a racial-discrimination lawsuit.

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