No one suspected that the note was written by a black woman named Mary Ellen Pleasant.In 1901, an elderly Pleasant dictated her autobiography to the journalist Sam Davis. 10:35. She would later move the store to midtown Manhattan on 57th Street. In 1949, Valdes was … I am still researching for more information. He caught 46 games, all barehanded and hit a .251 average.The first black baseball player in the big leagues, even before Jackie Robinson. Valdes’ first job was at a fancy boutique where she had to try very hard to prove she was capable. In 1949 Valdes was elected president of the New York Chapter of the National Association of Fashion and Accessory Designers (NAFAD), an organization of black designers that was founded by educator and activist Valdes’s celebrity clients included Josephine Baker, Mae West, Ella Fitzgerald, Dorothy Dandridge, Eartha Kitt, and Marian Anderson. He made you want to soak up the exuberance he clearly felt in delivering a whole new way of telling stories.When the abolitionist John Brown was hanged on Dec. 2, 1859, for murder and treason, a note found in his pocket read, “The ax is laid at the foot of the tree. Valdes moved to New York and opened her boutique, Chez Zelda, on Broadway and 158th Street. He played for the Toledo team in the old American Association in 1884. We’re adding their stories to our project about prominent people whose deaths were not reported by the newspaper.The fashion designer Zelda Wynn Valdes, who could fit a dress to a body of any size.A fashion designer who outfitted the glittery stars of screen and stage.In her top hat and tuxedo, Gladys Bentley belted out gender-bending tunes, becoming ’20s-era Harlem royalty.Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and CultureA gender-bending blues performer who became 1920s Harlem royalty.Scott Joplin circa 1904. She dressed some of the most famous women in the world, for their private lives and for major performances, and her talent deserves an equally large stage.Fashion is an aspect of culture — whether we think about it in financial or aesthetic terms — that affects most citizens in developed economies. Growing up Valdes studied her grandmother’s work as a seamstress and worked within her uncle’s tailoring shop. Valdes’s designs created a new sexier image for singer Joyce Bryant who was a huge star in the Black community in the early 1950s and whom Life Magazine later described as the “the Black Marilyn Monroe.” In 1958 Playboy Magazine founder Hugh Hefner hired Valdes to design the first Playboy Bunny costumes. In 1948, she opened her own shop on Broadway in New York City which was the first in the area to be owned by an African American. Her moment came on a streetcar ride to church.Philip A. Payton Jr., who is now known as the “father of Harlem.” He steered black residents uptown, making it the nexus of a community whose cultural output helped shape 20th-century America.Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public LibraryA real estate magnate who turned Harlem into a black mecca.Moses Fleetwood Walker, the first black man to play for a major league baseball team. From the very childhood, she showed intense love for fashion and started her professional career as a little designer in the tailoring shop of her uncle in White Plains, New York. It’s important that we not let the fact that Zelda Wynn Valdes was working within a segregated business environment restrict knowledge of her achievements. Subscribe To The Black Detour For The Latest In Black News, History & Culture Zelda Wynn Valdes (1905-2001) was an African American fashion and costume designer whose career spanned 40 years. Over time her good works were recognized and wanted by those who doubted her as a young black woman. Her grandmother was so impressed, despite doubting Valdes could construct an outfit to fit her tall frame. Oscar Micheaux directing a scene as seen in “Pioneers of African American Cinema" by Kino International. Zelda Wynn Valdes will be the first designer that Fashyou.blog will Spotlight. That distinction belongs to Moses Fleetwood Walker.On March 5, in San Francisco, The Times is hosting an evening honoring the Overlooked series. He helped start the Highwaymen, a collective of Floridian artists, all African-American, who painted vibrant landscapes of their home state.A charismatic businessman who created a movement for Florida’s black artists.Nina Mae McKinney, who was called the first black movie star after showing off her talents doing the Swanee Shuffle in the 1929 film “Hallelujah.”An actress who defied the barrier of race to find stardom in Europe.A portrait of the inventor Granville T. Woods, as featured in The Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1895.