Thomas Allen Harris and his Digital Diaspora Family Reunion Roadshow Team filmed seven interviews in Corona, Queens last week in partnership with Louis Armstrong House Museum (LAHM) and Langston Hughes Community Library and Cultural Center. Local New Yorkers shared the stories of their lives, families, and communities as told through photographs at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona, Queens and the Louis Armstrong Archives at Queens College in Flushing.
DDFR Roadshow team videotaped at Louis Armstrong House Museum (Left) and Selma Heraldo’s house (right).
Louis Armstrong’s extraordinary life and music are revealed through over 5,000 photographs, artifacts, and documents maintained by the LAHM.
Ricky Riccardi (Right), project archivist of the Louis Armstrong Archives at Queens College shares dozens of photographs and records from the Louis Armstrong Collection with Thomas Allen Harris (Director of DDFR.tv).
Director of photography Armando Louis Alvarez (left) poses with Thomas Allen Harris and a life-size image of Louis Armstrong in front of LAHM.
In addition to the unique collection of Armstrong images and memorabilia, the DDFR Roadshow Team captured a variety of family photos from Corona, Queens denizens. Louis Armstrong’s friends, neighbors and colleagues sat in front of the DDFR cameras and shared their family and community photographs which document their stories of this dynamic neighborhood.
To see more photos from the roadshow, visit our Flickr album.
DDFR Queens Participants:
Top row:
left – Andrew Jackson, executive director of Langston Hughes Community Library & Cultural Center, Queens Public Library
center – Frances Dixon, neighbor and long-time resident
right – Grace Lawrence, friend of Louis Armstrong, neighbor and long-time resident
Second row:
left – Paul Lawrence, long-time resident
center – Jimmy Heath, jazz saxophonist, composer, arranger and colleague of Louis Armstrong
right – Perfetto, neighbor and long-time resident
Bottom row:
left – Michael Cogswell, director of LAHM
right – Ricky Riccardi, project archivist
Thanks to:
officers at LAHM,
especially Michael Cogswell (Director)
Nayelli Dispaltro (Development Officer)
Ricky Riccardi (Archvist)
Langston Hughes Community Library & Cultural Center,
Queens Public Library
Rockefeller Foundation
Would you like the DDFR Roadshow to come to your community?
Email 1world1family.me@gmail.com to receive more information.
Check out the new trailer for “Through A Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People“ USA Projects.
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