Creator: Farrell, Charles Anderson, 1894-1977.
Collection number: 4452
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Abstract: Charles Anderson Farrell was a native of Yadkin County, North Carolina, and in 1923 moved to Greensboro where he became the first professional photographer of the Greensboro Daily News. In the 1920s and 1930s, Farrell also operated a photography studio, camera store, and art supply house in downtown Greensboro. Farrell died at the age of 83 in the Friends Home at Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1977. The collection includes correspondence, photocopies and drafts of literary manuscripts, clippings, and other material documenting the career of Charles A. Farrell (1894-1977), a Greensboro photographer, who contributed the photographs for several University of North Carolina Press books. The majority of the material relates to Stella Gentry Sharpe’s Tobe (1939), ahead of its time as a Southern book because it pictured blacks favorably as warm, intelligent human beings.
Repository: Southern Historical Collection
Collection Highlights: The majority of the material relates to Stella Gentry Sharpe’s Tobe (1939), a book describing the life of a young black child and his family in the 1930s. Tobe was considered revolutionary literature as it depicted black characters favorably. The collection includes public reactions from blacks and whites toward the book.