Roland Freeman, noted black photographer who started with us, dies at 87

Washington Post -Roland L. Freeman, a photographer who documented Black life for more than a half-century including vanishing quilt-making traditions in the rural South and civil rights struggles on the doorstep of the Capitol, died Aug. 7 at his home in the District. He was 87.Mr. Freeman had heart-related health problems, said his wife, Marcia Freeman.

Sam Smith - Roland Freeman introduced himself by screaming at me over the phone. We had run a striking front page shot of two karate students sent us with a news release by the Southeast Enrichment Center. When I answered Roland's call, I quickly learned that the photo had been his, that we should have given him credit, that he was a poor black drop-out who was working at a car wash trying to break into photography and how could we have been so cruel and so forth. Normally, I would have felt chastened, but Roland's aggressiveness sparked an uncharacteristic response: I started yelling back at him.

"Listen, you say you want to be a photographer?" I shouted.
"Yeah."
"And you want credit for your work?"
"That's right."
"Well, I'm gonna to tell you how to become a photographer and get full credit for your work."
"OK. I'm listening."
"What you do is you go and get yourself a fucking rubber stamp that reads 'Credit Roland Freeman, Photographer, all rights reserved' and you stamp every photo you take with that stamp and then you'll be a real photographer and I won't print anymore of your frigging photos without giving you credit."

The photo at issue

We both quieted down and the next thing I knew Roland was the Gazette's photo editor - from 1968 to 1973. Later he would win the first photographic grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and become a nationally known photographer, the first black associate of the photo cooperative Magnum, and an expert on African-America quilting.

Roland had been on his own a long time. By the time the Baltimore-born Freeman was 12 he had already been a newspaper delivery boy, shoe-shine boy, and a helper on junk and watermelon horse-and-wagons driven by men called "arabers." A biography Roland prepared for one of his exhibitions continued his story:

In the next two or three years he traveled with a small carnival, worked as a migrant laborer in the Southwest and rode the, rails for a short time, after which he settled on a small tobacco farm in Southern Maryland until the age of eighteen. Several months later, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force for four years, much of which time he spent in Paris, France. The complete renaissance which he underwent in Europe influenced his outlook on life from that time on. Upon his return to this country, he worked at a variety of jobs to support himself while he dabbled in art and folk music and he became deeply involved in the civil rights movement. Then he worked for a while as a hospital attendant manager of a car wash and filling station while he returned to school at night to further his education.

Years later he would return to Baltimore for an exhibit of his work on the arabers as well as a presentation from the mayor. When my wife and I arrived at the Baltimore Museum of Art auditorium, Roland was running up and down the aisles personally making sure everyone was where they were supposed to be. He just couldn't get it through his head that he was the guest of honor.

Everything excited Roland. Once, in the 1960s, as my wife Kathy was driving him on a photo mission, he started barking orders, "Slow down! See that man on the park bench, I want to get him. . . Take a right . . . Okay, now grab a left. . ."

It was, however, a no-left turn and a cop pulled Kathy over. As Kathy and the officer discussed her malfeasance, she heard a repeated click and whir. Glancing to the right she saw that Roland had his camera resting on the seat and pointed at the cop as he wrote the ticket. Fortunately the officer didn't notice and we ran the photos.