- He traveled to Paris in the late 1920s where he met such artists as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. He also met and drew writers James Joyce and Gertrude Stein.
- Was introduced to jazz by future acting great Paul Robeson.
- Longstreet's semi-autobiographical novel, "The Sisters Liked Them Handsome", served as the basis for the 1948 hit Broadway musical "High Button Shoes". Directed by George Abbott and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, the play starred Nanette Fabray and Phil Silvers, and Longstreet was played by child actor Johnny Stewart.
- Studied in Paris and at Rutgers and Harvard Universities, graduating from the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (Parsons) in 1929.
- Writer, cartoonist, and painter. He published over 100 novels and five books on jazz, illustrated with his own drawings and watercolors.
- He was renowned as an artist who painted portraits of jazz artists, among them Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington.
- Some sources suggest that he made a sizable, but uncredited, contribution to the screenplay of "Duel In The Sun" (1946).
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