Jennie Louise Touissant Welcome

Van Der Zee was born in Lenox, Massachusetts, to John Van Der Zee and Susan Brister. Before moving to Lenox, Massachusetts, her parents were maid and butler in New York to President Ulysses S. Grant. Jennie attended Lenox High School and took private lessons in art and music in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Early in the 20th century, she moved to New York with her father and brothers (one of whom, James Van Der Zee, became a photographer). She married Ernest Touissant Welcome, an inventor and entrepreneur, on January 10, 1910, and they moved into in a brownstone in New York City, Van Der Zee stood out during her time because she was the African American owner of a business in Harlem. ==Photography and filmmaking==

The couple made films and pictures that recognized African American contributions to World War I. Under the banner of the Touissant Motion Picture Exchange, they made Doing Their Bit in 1918. Between 1917 and 1918, The Touissant Pictorial Company published A Pictorial History of the Negro in the Great War, a memorial book that featured Jennie's work. It also included pictures from governmental sources and a few uncredited photos. The Touissant Pictorial Company published one million patriotic postcards of African American soldiers. After the war ended, the War Savings Stamp Committee accepted Van Der Zee's painting, Charge of the Colored Divisions, for use as a poster. Van Der Zee and her husband copyrighted the work in August 1918. No physical copies are known to exist. One of their most popular lithographs depicted members of the 369th Colored Infantry engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Germans; names of individual soldiers were given. ==Death==

Van Der Zee died in 1956. ==References==