Sarah Lou Harris born in Wilkesboro, North Carolina (July 4th, 1923) went to the HBCU Bennett College, graduated and moved to New York City to teach. Once there, in addition to teaching, she took more courses and acquired a master's degree. Curious about other avenues of improvement, she became a radio host and a dancer. These fields led to signing to with the Branford Modelling Agency, an agency created for Black models only. She and her colleagues broke barriers and changed minds about the concept that models could only be blonde and White.
Modelling took her around the globe. On one of her assignments she met John Carter. No. Not that John Carter. This John Carter was a Guyanese attorney. A prominent barrister who in 1944 had successfully gotten the death penalty, which had been handed down from the US military court for a a rape charge to an African-American soldier, commuted. Kismet struck when the couple met. Smitten, they wed. Years later, Queen Elizabeth II knighted Carter et voila! Sarah became Lady Sarah Lou Harris Carter, wife to a lawyer who happened to be an ambassador and a politician
Not too shabby for a girl from Wilkesboro, NC.
Lady Carter continued to model, When she quit the bright lights, she opened her own charm school in Guyana.
Predeceased in death by her husband, Lady Carter died on December 16, 2016 at the age of 93.
https://repeatingislands.com/2017/01/18/sara-lou-harris-carter-a-pioneer-as-model-and-guyanese-ambassadors-wife/
https://blackamericaweb.com/2017/09/28/little-known-black-history-fact-lady-sarah-lou-harris-carter/
Sarah in her heyday
Sir John Carter
No comments:
Post a Comment