Charles "Teenie" Harris, Collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art photos A photograph by Teenie Harris of two cross-dressers, one wearing a Gay Nineties outfit, the other in a Caribbean-style costume with Christmas ornaments in headdress, with man in bow tie, seated at bar, circa 1955. The piece is part of the exhibit "Carryin' On" at The Warhol. Click photo for larger image. More information A reception kicking off Pittsburgh Gay Black Pride Weekend will be at The Warhol tonight from 6 to 9, with DJ DRock and a cash bar in the Entrance Gallery from 6 to 7 p.m.; a "Carryin' On" panel discussion on the current state of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and intersex community in Pennsylvania from 7 to 8 p.m. and Drag King and Queen performances from 8 to 9 p.m. More information: www.pittsburghgayblackpride.com. "Carryin' On" runs through Sept. 2; more information: www.warhol.org or 412-237-8300. More photos View Teenie Harris photos in the Carryin' On exhibit

The 41 Charles "Teenie" Harris photographs that comprise the bulk of The Andy Warhol Museum's "Carryin' On" exhibit illuminate an oft unseen and undocumented part of Pittsburgh's black community.

Harris' portion of "Carryin' On" -- a three-part exhibit examining gender identity that also includes works by Congolese photographer Samuel Fosso and Andy Warhol -- is a delicious, unapologetic and celebratory look at black queer life in Pittsburgh's Hill District from the 1930s through the 1950s.

"It's a slice of life that has a wonderful richness to it that has not been seen before in his work or in another African-American's work in that period," said Tom Sokolowski, the museum's director. "That's why we thought it was rather special."

In one photograph, two mocha-skinned cross-dressers -- one wearing a Caribbean-style costume with Christmas ornaments adorning the headdress, the other in a Gay Nineties outfit with a wide-brimmed hat and long-sleeved gown revealing one shoulder -- flank an attractive ebony man wearing a hat and a bow-tie, seated at a bar.

The year is estimated to be 1955, and the cross-dressers could be performers or patrons out for a night on the town. All three are relaxed, smiling and definitely not hiding in the shadows.

For the exhibit, photographer Richard Stoner produced the contemporary gelatin silver prints of Harris' photographs, which were drawn from the extensive 80,000-photograph archive the Carnegie Museum of Art has of Harris' photographs. As a photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier, Harris created the largest known single collection of images of any U.S. black community.

One photograph titled "Three cross-dressers in a bar, one in full evening dress with sequined bodice," circa 1959, features the three sitting in chairs in front of a booth at the legendary Crawford Grill.

"They don't seem upset to me," says the Rev. Deryck Tines, a Pittsburgh performer, artist and guest curator for the Harris segment of the exhibit. "They're having a drink."

Tines loves the effortless integration of the black straight community and black queer community evidenced in the photographs.

"Just that Teenie captured the cross-dressers was a huge statement for me," he says.

Some photographs are sensual, others stoic and most quite matter-of-fact about the seemingly peaceful coexistence of black life and black queer life. Cross-dressing entertainers were integral parts of the black entertainment circuit and cross-dressing patrons attended black community entertainment events.

One work, titled "Two scantily dressed male performers, one a female impersonator, dancing on a floor of club with band and audience in background, photographs of musicians on wall," circa 1940-1965, calls to mind the rhythmic strains of Abbey Lincoln's rendition of Mongo Santamaria's "Afro-Blue":

Shades of delight/ Cocoa hue/ Rich as the night/ Afro blue.

Mainstream Hill District clubs, such as the Crawford Grill, as well as private clubs, such as Little Paris, were host to major African-American music acts of the time, drawing in people from throughout the black community.

"These clubs, although private, weren't exactly clandestine," Sokolowski says. "They were just carryin' on, whether that meant they were gay or bisexual or straight people who just liked to put on a frock and have a good time. Whatever it was, these clubs weren't just that, they were also major music venues at the time."

Another photograph, from June 1965, is a group portrait of several famous musicians including Pittsburgh's own Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Earl "Fatha" Hines, Billy Taylor and Willie "The Lion" Smith.

"Everybody in the [black] community came to these events," Tines says. "It wasn't necessarily a gay club. It was about being a part and hanging out."

Tines approached Sokolowski last fall about the idea of bringing the exhibit to the museum.

"When I saw some of these photos about eight years ago and the persons in the photos -- their contexts, pride, joy, celebration and sense of community that occurred within my local Hill District -- I stood in the middle of the sidewalk and cried," Tines says. "I cried for the seeming lack of community in our city today; I cried at the discovery of the history captured in the photos; I cried in celebration of Teenie Harris; I cried because the photos were on the street in the Strip [District] and not hanging in a gallery somewhere being celebrated."

Although only 41 pictures of the black queer community are in the exhibit, there are at least 20 more known to researchers and possibly even more in the Harris archive that have yet to be discovered.

"These pictures have been here all along," Tines says. "For other curators to have excluded these speaks volumes about them."

The Carnegie Museum of Art continues its efforts to identify more people, places and events in Harris' works. Anyone who can provide additional information about a photograph is invited to do so on a form at the exhibit or via the museum's Web site, where more than 34,000 of Harris' photographs can be viewed online at www.cmoa.org/searchcollections.

Fosso's segment of the exhibit includes nine self portraits of him dressed as everything from a pirate and a ship's captain to a businessman and a gender-bending chanteuse-like character in a black sequined gown with white feather boa. Warhol's portion includes works drawn from his 1975 series of paintings, prints and collage studies titled "Ladies and Gentleman," which included black and Hispanic transvestites as models.

The exhibit at The Warhol is just the beginning. Tines hopes the exhibit will travel, as well as serve as the basis for a book.

"Black LGBT people in this region have always been part of the community -- visible, yet invisible; beautiful, yet overlooked; contributors but not acknowledged; vocal, yet voiceless," Tines says

When he asked older members of the black community who frequented clubs pictured in the exhibit whether they referred to themselves as gay or queer in those days, people told him simply, "We didn't call ourselves anything. We were just carryin' on."