Kwame Brathwaite born Gilbert Ronald Brathwaite was an American photojournalist and activist best known for popularizing the phrase "Black is Beautiful". He adopted the name Kwame in the early 1960s, a tribute to Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of post-colonial Ghana. In 1956 Brathwaite founded the African Jazz Art Society and Studios. In 1962, together with his brother Elombe Brath, Brathwaite staged the Naturally '62 pageant, the first of a series of pageants to feature only black models title... moreKwame Brathwaite born Gilbert Ronald Brathwaite was an American photojournalist and activist best known for popularizing the phrase "Black is Beautiful". He adopted the name Kwame in the early 1960s, a tribute to Kwame Nkrumah, the first leader of post-colonial Ghana. In 1956 Brathwaite founded the African Jazz Art Society and Studios. In 1962, together with his brother Elombe Brath, Brathwaite staged the Naturally '62 pageant, the first of a series of pageants to feature only black models titled The Original African Coiffure and Fashion Extravaganza Designed to Restore Our Racial Pride & Standards. In addition, Brathwaite doubled as a freelance photojournalist for Black publications like The New York Amsterdam News, The City Sun and Essence magazine. He used these platforms to chronicle the struggles of the civil rights era in his native New York. He also traveled the world to file dispatches from the front lines in the battle for Pan-African unity. He will be remembered for taking pictures of cultural figures like Muhammad Ali and James Brown, along with Black fashion models and ordinary citizens, which were hailed as a catalyst of the “Black is beautiful” movement of the 1960s and beyond.
