Pair of Photographs of Moton’s Sharps and Flats, c. 1930s

Tuskegee, 1930. Pair of silver gelatin prints measuring 9 ½ x 7 ⅞ and 7 x 5 inches. Residue to versos from removal from scrapbook, tear and crease to larger image, very good contrast. Very Good. A pair of photographs from the prolific photographer Prentice H. Polk of a band led by Allen Moton, the son of Dr. Robert Moton, the president of Tuskegee University. Moton was, among other things, an acquaintance of Ralph Ellison’s at Tuskegee, and may have been the inspiration for the car ride in Invisible Man, as Ellison recounted a particularly harrowing drive with Moton in his father’s Cadillac with the pianist Hazel Harrison, in which Moton was trying to impress Hazelton with his knowledge of philosophy. According to an article in the Tuskegee Herald in 1956, Moton also played with Teddy Wilson at Tuskegee before Wilson joined Benny Goodman’s band. The larger photograph has several of the band members identified in ink on the verso, as Allen Moton, Morris, Lollypop, Baker, Robert (likely Moton, also a musician), and Crosby. We find no record of the band besides the photograph, leaving the possibility open that “Moton’s Sharps and Flats” was not the name under which they performed.

Works cited: Gebhart, Caroline. Ghosts of Tuskegee. In: Devlin, Paul (editor). Ralph Ellison in Context. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2021.