When photographer Leonard McCombe visited Navajo country in Arizona to create the images in this story, however, he caught a people at a very specific and important point in that long and ongoing history. The Navajo Nation, which comprised about 61,000 members at the time and was the fastest-growing Native American group in the nation, was at a moment of crisis.

By that point in 1948, the land on which the Navajos lived could no longer support them and Americans were hearing reports of starvation on the reservation. However, as LIFE noted, simply sending food wouldn’t solve the problem.

The story focused on the extended Yellowsalt family, most of whom made their living by herding sheep. The family couldn’t get permission from reservation administrators—who pointed to the disappearing grass in the area—to expand the flock. By the government’s calculations, according to LIFE, the land could only support enough sheep for about 20% of the families to own enough of the animals to make a sustainable living. Meanwhile, exposure to white populations had introduced devastating diseases into the Navajo community, and government-run hospitals didn’t have enough beds to support the population.

The central questions posed by the story were inescapable: “How can technical knowledge be made available to people without destroying the fabric of their lives? How can nations which differ from each other in appearance and language and culture live peaceably together?”

“Overall, I was surprised at the general accuracy of the piece,” said David E. Wilkins, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota and an author of The Navajo Political Experience, considering the date and the audience for which it was written. “It was full of the assimilation language that was dominant at the time, but that wasn’t surprising.”

Wilkins has some quibbles with the story. For example, LIFE published images of bare-breasted Navajo women that strike him as strange, as he says he’s not aware of a ceremony in which Navajo women would usually go unadorned. But the big thing that’s missing, he says, is a sense of the larger context in which the Yellowsalt family was living. LIFE hints at the reasons why there aren’t enough sheep for the family to prosper, noting that when the people returned to land they had been forced from in the late 1800s, it was now a reservation “hemmed in by land-hungry whites,” and that grazing flocks on that fenced-in space destroyed the range. “As the Navajo nation grew,” LIFE noted, “the land, the basis of its existence, began to fail.” But as Wilkins points out, it was a federal livestock-reduction program in the 1930s not the natural course of things that had mandated they cut back on grazing animals on that land.

“In 1948, the Navajo Nation was still reeling from the livestock-reduction program,” he says. “It devastated the Navajos economically, psychically and culturally.”

The coming of World War II staved off economic disaster for a little while; Wilkins says that more than 15,000 Navajos were employed in some fashion as a result of the war. But in 1948 the consequences could no longer be denied. “The war’s over and they go back to the reservation and there’s nothing there because of wrong-headed policy makers who thought they were doing the right thing,” he explains. Though those policy-makers thought they saving the land from overgrazing, Wilkins says that in fact later research shows that the Navajo livestock were not a primary cause of the problems. In addition, though federal policy affected every aspect of Navajo life, it was only later in 1948 that the Arizona Supreme Court declared that the state’s Navajo citizens had the right to vote.

The best thing about this article, Wilkins said, is what happened after it was published.

Media attention paid to the crisis among the Navajo People, with popular journalistic reports such as this one, contributed to Congress passing the Navajo-Hopi Long Range Rehabilitation Act, which “helped to save those two peoples from the economically crippled situation they were in.” That, perhaps, is part of the answer to that question: How can two very different nations live peaceably together?

Seated close to the evening fire, old man Gray Mountain, 91, told his small grandchildren legends about the early days of the Navajo people.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

A Navajo family living on a reservation.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Toward sunddown the Yellowsalts finished up their outdoor chores and start the fire for their evening meal. In the background is Navajo Mountain.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Yellowsalt’s son had his hair brushed by his wife.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

A Navajo woman smoked a hand-rolled cigarette.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

A Navajo young man.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

This Navajo woman sported Navajo-crafted silver shirt collar caps, beaded earrings, and a beaded necklace complete with silver quarters and 50 cent pieces strung together like a tie.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Baking bread, a woman knelt by the fire while a loaf cooked on a crude metal grill.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

A Navajo girl hugged her dog while she watched the sheep on the high plateau.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

The game of marbles, was explained by the boy at center to his brother and sister. This boy, who went to school, learned the game there.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

A Navajo traded at the store on the reservation.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Navajo children received religious instruction.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Navajo children napped on the tables and the floor.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Navajo girls swept the sidewalk.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

A young Navajo girl read a Raggedy Ann book.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

Navajo schoolchildren got a lesson in nose-blowing from a white teacher.

Leonard McCombe The LIFE Images Collection/Shutterstock

The post ‘A Country Within a Country’: Inside the Navajo Nation, 1948 appeared first on LIFE.

Planning entailed both logistical and motivational efforts. At a giant pep rally, the morale of staff members was lifted by a harmonious rendition of “Jingle Bells.” Telephone operators prepared to respond to as many as six questions per minute. Plainclothes employee detectives trained to spot shoplifters from among the hordes. And clerks readied themselves to handle fluid pricing on that year’s hottest items from striped pajamas to “simulated” pearls to Macy’s house-brand Scotch which fluctuated as many as five times per day as reports of competitors” pricing came in.

When all was said and done, when the bargains had been scored and the pajama sets sold, all that was left behind was one million square feet of a giant, heaping mess.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Jane Pickens leads 9,000 Macy’s employees in “Jingle Bells” during a giant rally designed to whip up the fever of salesmanship for the 1948 Christmas rush.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Eager customers stand outside the doors of Macy’s, 1948.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Holiday shoppers line the sidewalk outside of Macy’s, 1948.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Macy’s shoppers wait to be allowed on the floor, 1948.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

The bulletin board lists price changes that made as a result of comparison shopping. Macy’s got around fixed prices by producing their own brands and fixing their own prices.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Shoppers clamoring for coveted items.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

This was how many pearls [salesgirl] Janet [Steurer] would sell in one day.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

A customer examines a string of pearls, 1948.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Santa Clauses at Macy’s, 1948.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Young salesman William Komlos (Yale ’48) was a member of the 60-man executive training squad.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

The sales floor at Macy’s.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Women trying on furs in the Macy’s dressing room

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Comparison shoppers would buy items in competing stores and then bring in merchandise priced under Macy’s. Macy’s would then lower its prices to undersell the competition.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

A child with her doll at the crowded Macy’s world heardquarters.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

Macy’s store hospital treated 65,000 patients a year. This was a typical Monday morning lineup of people having their temperatures taken. The lineup was longer after big sale days.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

A pageant being performed for the store’s thousands of employees before the holiday rush, 1948.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

The mess in the wake of a major sale day, 1948.

Nina Leen / The LIFE Picture Collection

The post How Black Friday Looked Before It Was Called Black Friday appeared first on LIFE.

Born William Ivy in Houston, Texas, in 1866, Baldwin adopted his last name from a pair of daredevil brothers he performed with as a young man. Hooked on tightrope walking after a childhood sighting of an impressive wire-walker, Baldwin left home as a young teenager to join a traveling circus. He developed a repertoire of stunts that included parachuting out of hot air balloons and diving off of impossibly high towers. He was also a pioneering aviator, and the first to fly a plane in the state of Nevada, in 1910.

But he is best remembered, in Colorado lore, for his repeated crossings of South Boulder Creek, clad in cloth slippers and carrying a 26-ft. pole for balance. Some attempts nearly took his life, as on one occasion during which unexpectedly persistent gusts of wind forced him to hang from his knees for over an hour. When he finally retired at 82, after the walk photographed by LIFE’s John Florea, it came at the insistence of his family. Baldwin, as befits one who made his fame by walking, would have been happy to keep going.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

82-year-old tightrope walker Ivy Baldwin rests on a rock at Boulder Dam, Colorado, 1948.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Baldwin gingerly begins to walk on a tightrope at Boulder Dam, Colorado, 1948.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Baldwin makes his way across Boulder Dam, 1948.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Baldwin appears suspended in air as spectators watch from below, 1948.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Baldwin makes his way to the other side of Boulder Dam, 1948.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young fans greet Baldwin after his feat, 1948.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Baldwin talks to the press at Boulder Dam, Colorado, 1948.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Fans present Baldwin with a celebratory cake, 1948.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Baldwin looks out across Boulder Dam, 1948.

John Florea The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Old Man and the Wire: When an 82-Year-Old Walked The Tightrope appeared first on LIFE.

Liz Ronk edited this gallery for LIFE.com. Follow her on Twitter @lizabethronk.

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Young cowgirl Esther Allen trout fishing in String Lake. Teton Mountains behind.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Guests sitting around fireplace and listening to live music at Bearpaw Dude Ranch. Jack Huyler, the son of the owner, is playing guitar. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Room full of patrons gambling at The Cowboy Bar. Gambling was permitted during tourist season. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Highway 189 entering Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Lake and Grand Teton Mountain Range seen from the Ranch owned by Mr. and Mrs. Berol. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Jackson Hole 1948

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Moose feeding in stream, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Entering Jackson Hole from the east along the Blackrock Creek with the Grand Tetons in the background. Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post Jackson Hole in its Dude Ranch Days appeared first on LIFE.

One of the primary creators of bebop in the mid-1940s and an unparalleled trumpeter, Dizzy was a populist who wanted his music to be understood, appreciated and enjoyed. Audiences may have associated him with signature visual clues the beret and goatee he sported in the 1940s, and the trumpet with the upturned bell he began playing in the 1950s and adored his onstage clowning and dancing, but anyone with ears could tell how seriously he always took the music. An international star until his death on January 6, 1993 (the same day as Rudolph Nureyev), Gillespie was as fervently respected by fellow musicians, as he was beloved by generations of listeners.

A spread by LIFE photographer Allan Grant in our October 11, 1948 issue, during bebop’s glory days. Conspicuous in his absence is Charlie Parker, the avatar of bebop, and the man whom Dizzy called “the other side of my heartbeat,” but Gillespie’s vivacious personality was far more palatable to the mainstream. To see this magnificent musician in his youth, ready to convince the world that the music he and his not-yet-understood peers were making was the sound of the future, is still a glorious thing to behold.

Steve Futterman is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer.

Dizzy Gillespie, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie greeting fellow musician Benny Carter, 1948.

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie. 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Crooner Mel (Velvet Fog) Torme happily bites on his finger while he and a model, June Bright, watch Dizzy Gillespie (reflected in mirror), 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Drummer Chano Pozo, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Actress Ava Gardner dons beret and specs and pretends to wear goatee at Billy Berg’s Hollywood nightclub as Dizzy (left) grins.

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie signing autographs, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

Dizzy Gillespie, 1948

Allan Grant / The LIFE Picture Collection

The post LIFE With Dizzy Gillespie: Rare and Classic Portraits of a Playful Genius appeared first on LIFE.

A 1947 graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Gwyned Filling moved to New York with a friend a week after commencement. Less than a year later, LIFE selected her, from more than a thousand other candidates, to serve as an emblem of the modern “career girl” the smart, driven young woman who viewed post-World War II America, and especially its big cities, as a place where opportunities seemed limitless. After all, the nation’s workforce during the critical war years had been transformed by a massive influx of skilled female workers; when the war ended, it was only natural that educated, ambitious women would view the labor landscape as utterly changed for the better.

The article that appeared in the May 3, 1948, issue of LIFE titled “The Private Life of Gwyned Filling” follows Gwyned as she negotiates the frenetic universe of New York City while trying to keep her own personal hopes and career expectations in perspective. She works; she dines out; she stays abreast of the doings of friends and family back home; she dates; she dreams.

The reaction of LIFE’s readers, meanwhile, ranged (perhaps predictably) from outrage and moral indignation at Gwyned’s “unladylike” pursuits to a kind of celebratory relief that LIFE chose to show on its cover “a young woman with a serious, purposeful, intelligent face” rather than “some vacuous-faced female with the molar grin that has come to be regarded in America as a smile.”

A reader from Detroit, on the other hand, opined that if the story “can keep only a few girls in their small-town homes it will have done at least some small service to humanity. Big cities are a menace to the progress of civilization. The people who fling themselves against them to be battered to pieces like moths against a lamp are fools.”

In the end, the enduring value of “The Private Life of Gwyned Filling,” and of McCombe’s quiet, masterful portrait of Gwyned at her happiest, her most determined and her most despairing, is that it serves as an honest record of a certain moment (the late 1940s) in a certain place (New York City) as experienced, to one degree or another, by countless women striving for something beyond what might have been expected of them a mere generation before. The article continued to fascinate years after its publication.

Finally, it’s worth noting that in November 1948 Gwyned married the man, Charles B. Straus, Jr., she is seen dating (and, at times, weeping over) in some of these pictures. They remained married for 54 years they had two kids and several grandkids until Straus died in 2002. Gwyned died in 2005, in Rhode Island. She was 80 years old.

Here are images from the story shot by McCombe, and also some images of her with new husband Charles Straus Jr. shot by LIFE photographer George Silk as they departed on a honeymoon cruise.

Gwyned Filling, alone in a crowd that has gathered to watch a fire in the city, stands on tiptoe and tilts back her head to get a better view, New York City, 1948.

Leonard McCombe/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, May 3, 1948.

Leonard McCombe—LIFE Magazine

LIFE magazine, May 3, 1948.

Photos by Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, May 3, 1948.

Photos by Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, May 3, 1948.

Photos by Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, May 3, 1948.

Photos by Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, May 3, 1948.

Photos by Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

LIFE magazine, May 3, 1948.

Photos by Leonard McCombe/LIfe Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles Straus Jr. and “career girl” Gwyned Filling aboard ship as they leave for honeymoon cruise, Nov. 1948.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Gwyned Filling and husband Charles Straus Jr. standing by rail as Statue of Liberty fades past, November 1948.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Charles Straus Jr. and “career girl” Gwyned Filling aboard ship as they leave for honeymoon cruise, November 1948.

George Silk/Life Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post ‘Career Girl’: A Famed Portrait of a Young Woman’s Life in 1948 New York appeared first on LIFE.