Scope and Contents

Less than one linear foot of photographs, DVDs, and a book titled I Have Almost 500 Years: Africa's Legacy in Mexico, Central and South America, documents photography by Tony Gleaton, part of the Contact Sheet series.

Biographical / Historical

Leo Antony "Tony" Gleaton (4 August 1948 - 14 August 2015), was born in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until age 11 when his family moved to California. Following high school graduation, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1967. He was first stationed at Camp Hansen (Okinawa) before deploying to South Vietnam in October 1967. During the 1968 Tet Offensive, Gleaton volunteered to go to Khe Sanh Base Camp in the middle of the siege; upon exiting the aircraft while landing, he was wounded by a mortar and evacuated to Japan for recovery. Gleaton returned to South Vietnam in May 1968 and served first as the battalion commander's radioman for 1st Battalion, 1st Marines in I Corps until July 1968, and then as a ground forward air controller (FAC) attached to Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, until his tour ended in November 1968. He separated from the military in 1970.

Gleaton studied at California universities in the 1970s, then moved to in New York City 1977 abd worked as a fashion photographer. In 1980 he left that line of work and for several years he worked itinerent jobs and traveled throughout Texas and Mexico, also taking photographs of mixed race and ethnic minorities. In 2002 he earned an MFA in Fine Arts Photography from Bard College and moved to Texas Tech University where he taught photography and was also the scholar-in-residence with the Texas Tech Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library for several years.

Gleaton developed into a world-renowned photographer specializing in black and white photograph that documents "African displacement" throughout the Americas. His books and exhibits helped bring an awareness to the world of the minority peoples of the southwestern United States, Mexico, and Central and South America.