Cassandra Griffen, Famend Documentary Photographer, Dies at 75

By Shauna Stuart | For The Birmingham Times

Cassandra Griffen, an activist and famend documentary photographer whose many notable photographs included the Civil Rights Movement in addition to Sun Ra Arkestra, was celebrated on Sunday by a number of Birmingham artists, historians, and musicians. Mrs. Griffen died on Oct. 23. She was 75.

Family and associates filed into East Village Arts, the neighborhood’s avant-garde nonprofit artist collective, a bit of earlier than 2 p.m. The gathering was jovial and filled with music. Griffen was a longtime photographer of the nation’s cultural and political scene. Her household outfitted the colourful neighborhood arts area as a testomony to her life’s work.

Rene Kemp-Rotan, an city designer and grasp planner, was internet hosting an outside civic engagement presentation in 2004 in regards to the plans for Railroad Park, when Mrs. Griffen approached her after the speech. The two girls, together with Carol Clarke, then Director of the Birmingham Department of Economic Development, would later bond over a mutual love of artwork, jazz, New York, and cultural preservation.

“She was literally recording life as it happened,” mentioned Kemp-Rotan. “Particularly in the Black political community.”

Birmingham native Wilhelmina Thomas, a textile artist and historian, remembered Mrs. Griffen as an individual with a wealth of knowledge. “A lot of the anecdotal stories that I got, I got from her. I got ideas of where to research … and she is a debutante. She just went out and was an ambassador to the world for Birmingham, of what out African American potential is.”

At the celebration, a gallery of Mrs. Griffen’s images lined the entrance of East Village Arts. One desk sported a 2016 picture of Black Lives Matter demonstrations, alongside colourful portraits of members of SunRa’s Arkestra.

Nearby sat black and white images of singer and Civil Rights icon Nina Simone, outfitted in a one-shoulder gown and holding a shekere above her head as she danced. Another a part of the gallery was devoted to Mrs. Griffen’s images of revered Alabama icons– black and white portraits of legendary blues musician Henry “Gip” Gipson, Civil Rights chief Fred Shuttlesworth, and a candid aspect profile of lauded poet Sonia Sanchez in dialog with a small group.

Near the again, a quartet of beloved Birmingham jazz musicians– Bo Berry, Willie Jackson, Bernard McQueen, and John Nuckols performed jazz requirements to welcome attendees as they settled into their seats.

Cassandra Griffen was born on Jan. 25, 1950 in Wilson, N.C. Her mother and father, Charles Richard Griffen and Bertha Baynes Griffen, have been educators within the state’s public faculty system. Mrs. Griffen began taking images at household gatherings when she was 11. Over the many years, she continued to develop her craft and merge her expertise for pictures and storytelling along with her ardour for social justice. In New York, Mrs. Griffen took on roles as a gerontologist and an ombudsman, advocating for the rights of elders in nursing houses.

Griffen additionally served as a member of the New York state human rights fee, working to draft honest housing insurance policies. During her tenures in New Jersey and New York, she photographed the humanities and tradition scenes. In the late Nineteen Seventies, whereas residing in New York City, she frequented the famed CBGB music membership in New York when she met the SunRa Arkestra.

Mrs. Griffen developed a bond with the group and ultimately developed a status because the collective’s documentary photographer. Griffen was additionally the one lady allowed to spend the evening within the Arkestra home in Philly’s Germantown neighborhood. Sun Ra, the Arkestra’s pioneering– however notoriously strict– bandleader, famously barred girls from spending the evening within the compound. That rule is a truth Sun Ra Arkestra saxophonist and composer Knoel Scott remembers with element.

“Sun Ra didn’t want women staying with us. He said they break up bands,” however he trusted Cassandra, Scott mentioned with amusing, throughout a current telephone name from London. “ … Cassandra could stay the night. She was the only woman who Sun Ra didn’t mind staying with us.”

To the Arkestra, Mrs. Griffen was greater than a documentarian and good friend. She was additionally dedicated to preserving the creative legacy of Sun Ra and making certain that his message of liberation for Black individuals didn’t get erased as extra audiences embraced Sun Ra’s music and picture.

“I really appreciated that,” mentioned Scott. “She celebrated Sun Ra as one of the legends in the African American community and African American culture and the continuation of the African American tradition.”

In 1999, after greater than 40 years within the northeast, Griffen moved to Birmingham to be near her uncle, JT McKinney, one of many first African American jitney bus homeowners in Alabama, mentioned Mrs. Griffen’s daughter Oneika Brooks DeJoy.

“She moved to Birmingham to take care of him and write a story about him,” mentioned DeJoy.

In the South, Mrs. Griffen continued to {photograph} artwork, tradition, and historic scenes in Alabama and across the area. As she developed a rapport and relationships with mayors, Civil Rights luminaries, and metropolis leaders, her portfolio expanded to incorporate images of Fred Shuttlesworth, Coretta Scott King, and former Birmingham Mayor William Bell. Griffen frequented jazz golf equipment and Gip’s Place, the historic juke joint in Bessemer. She additionally recurrently photographed artist Joe Minter and his African Village in America.

The connections would ultimately result in exhibitions at storied Birmingham establishments, together with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute’s Odessa Woolfolk Gallery.