Harlem’s Man of a Thousand Faces: Artists’ Model Maurice Hunter and Interwar Black Identity

In October1927, a one-hour radio show profiled “notable colored men.” Among well-known figures that included W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Paul Robeson was Maurice Hunter, who, the host declared, “is an artist’s model who has won wide acclaim for his poses.” Indeed, he had. Although largely forgotten today, Hunter was well known in Harlem from the 1920s to the 1950s. His fame was not limited to upper Manhattan, although those who knew his face may not have known his name; as the New Yorker noted in 1935, “you can be pretty sure that any darky waiter you see in a cigarette or whiskey ad is Hunter, or any dusky pirate, sheik, Moor, African, South Sea native, or Negro cotton-picker, convict, or crap-shooter you see in the magazine illustrations.”

Hunter claimed to have been born variously in South Africa, Dahomey, or Dutch Guiana, and used this heritage to forge an extraordinary career. As well as supporting himself with advertising work, he was also feted for frequent stage performances he called “African pantomime,” and for his work as an artist’s model, bringing a supposed African authenticity to his role as muse. Even late in his life, Hunter was lauded for his services to African Americans when a medal for children was named for him. In 1945 and 1965, the Schomburg Center hosted retrospective exhibitions of his life’s work.

This paper will explore how a burgeoning black public sphere, centered in Harlem, was both made possible by people like Hunter, and the perfect stage for such a career. It was also in this urban setting that black Americans began to connect their day-to-day lives with broader political struggles, in local, national, international, and transnational arenas.