Lily Golden sits on a window seat at her home, circa 1950, Moscow

Photograph of Lily Gordon at her home in Moscow. Golden holds a book and looks out the window as she sits in a window seat. Lily's father, John Golden, was an African-American who experienced racial persecution in the United States. In 1931, he and his wife, Bertha, moved to the U.S.S.R., where Golden worked as a specialist in cotton cultivation in the Central Asian city of Tashkent. His daughter, Lily, was born in Tashkent in 1934, and spent her early years there, becoming a tennis champion of Soviet Central Asia. She later moved to Moscow to study African history and music. Lily was living in Moscow when Charlotta Bass, publisher of the California Eagle, visited there in 1950.