HENDERSON, Harry B(rinton), Jr. 1914-2003

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born September 9, 1914, in Kittanning, PA; died of a heart attack September 1, 2003, in Croton-on-Hudson, NY. Journalist, editor, and author. Henderson is best remembered for his important 1993 collaborative effort with Romare Bearden, A History of African-American Artists. Educated at Pennsylvania State College, where he earned a B.S. in 1936, he was a regular contributor to magazines such as Collier's, Readers Digest, and Harper's, writing on everything from jazz to racism in politics. During the 1970s, he edited the Medical Tribune and Hospital Tribune, while working as editor in chief for the World Wide Medical Press. Although he was white, Henderson was deeply interested in African American art and music, and his friendship with painter and collage artist Romare Bearden resulted first in a 1972 publication titled Six Black Masters of American Art (1972), as well as an enormous research project on African artists that began in 1966 and was not completed until 1988, after Bearden had passed away. The product of this research, A History of African-American Artists, was a highly praised compilation of biographies going back to the eighteenth century. Henderson was also the coauthor of War in Our Time: Beginning with the Invasion of Manchuria by the Japanese (1942) and Your Inner Child of the Past (1963). At the time of his death, he had just finished a book on nineteenth-century sculptor Edmonia Lewis.

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2003, p. B14.

Washington Post, September 15, 2003, p. B4.