"Negro Boys on Easter Morning" Photoshoot in Chicago's Bronzeville Neighborhood. 1941

The photograph titled "Negro Boys on Easter Morning" was taken on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1941, across the street from the Regal Theater in Chicago's Bronzeville Neighborhood by Russell Lee, a photographer from the federal government’s 'Farm Security Administration.' 

The photo is of five Negro boys dressed for Easter church services, perched atop a Pontiac Silver Streak Six that has become an iconic Chicago image. 

The famous photo: "Negro Boys on Easter Morning."

The only one of the five boys to be identified as the tall, hatless teenager in the middle, Spencer Lee Readus, Jr., who was 14 when the photo was taken. “I was going to the show on Easter Sunday, and a white man approached me to ask if he could take a picture of these other boys and me,” Readus said. Lee posed the kids in front of a parked car. Spencer was the tallest and the only one without a hat, so he was put front and center in the photo.

Readus went on to serve in the U.S. Army during World War II and built a career as a plaster foreman. He and his wife, Setrennia, raised four children, Spencer Lee III, Claudia, Cherie, and Laurence. They lived in the Roseland neighborhood of Chicago.

Spencer Lee Readus Jr. is the only Negro at a Chicago Plastering Institute celebration. He’s in the 2nd row on the left in this 1956 photograph.
Photo: WTTW Chicago.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.