Beginning with the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, photography and photographers played an important role in advancing the civil rights movement by documenting the public and private acts of racial discrimination against African Americans and the nonviolent response of the movement. This article focuses on these photographers and the role that they played in the movement between 1954 and 1968, particularly in the South.
Notable photographers and the roles they played
Bob Adelman (1931–2016), volunteered as a photographer for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the early 1960s and photographed the events and the now well-known people active in the civil rights movement at the time.
James H. Barker, documented civil rights movement activity in Selma in the early 1960s.[1]
Bruce Davidson (born 1933), chronicled the events and effects of the civil rights movement, in both the North and the South, from 1961 to 1965. In support of his project, Davidson received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1962 and his finished project was displayed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Upon the completion of his documentation of the civil rights movement, Davidson received the first ever photography grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Benedict J. Fernandez (1936–2021), extensively documented the 1968 Sanitation Worker's Strike in Memphis.
Bob Fitch (1939–2016), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) photographer in 1965 and 1966. His images includes school integration, voter registration actions, and candidate campaigns in Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia; the March Against Fear in Mississippi; and intimate photos of the King family during Dr. King's funeral. His pictures appeared nationally in Afro-American publications including Johnson Publishing's JET and EBONY. Fitch's photos appeared in the 1997 Smithsonian Exhibit "We Shall Overcome", and his portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in his Atlanta, Georgia, office with a print of Mohandas Gandhi on the wall, is the model for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial monument in Washington, D.C.[2]
Matt Herron (1931–2020), documented the Freedom Summer of 1964. That year, he organized a team of five photographers, The Southern Documentary Project, in an attempt to record the changing racial landscape of Mississippi.[6]
R.C. Hickman (c. 1922–2007), documented the everyday life of African-Americans in Dallas, Texas, published in his book Behold the People in 1994.[7] He also photographed the visitations of notable individuals such as Martin Luther King Jr. in Dallas.[8]
James H. Karales (1930–2002), photographer for Look magazine from 1960 to 1971, covered the civil rights movement throughout its duration and took many memorable photographs including photos of SNCC's formation, of Dr. King and his associates, and, during his full coverage of the event, the iconic photograph of the Selma to Montgomery march showing people proudly marching along the highway under a cloudy turbulent sky.[10] In 2013 a book of his photographs, Controversy and Hope: The Civil Rights Movement Photographs of James Karales, was published by the University of South Carolina Press.
Danny Lyon (born 1942), published his first photographs working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. His pictures appeared in The Movement, a documentary book about the Southern civil rights movement, as well as Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, his own memoir of his years working for SNCC.
James "Spider" Martin (1939–2003), took photographs documenting the March, 1965 beating of many of the marchers during the first Selma to Montgomery march, known as "Bloody Sunday". Speaking about the effect of photography on the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Spider, we could have marched, we could have protested forever, but if it weren't for guys like you it would have been for nothing. The whole world saw your pictures. That's why the Voting Rights Act was passed."[11]
Jack Moebes (1911–2002), only photographer to capture the Greensboro Four after they sat at the lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, arguably helping to precipitate the Civil Rights Sit-ins in other cities throughout the South. It appears in both the Smithsonian's American History and African American Museums and as widely in textbooks, magazines, books and other museums. Moebes documented numerous civil rights events in Greensboro over his 30-year career with the Greensboro News and Record from 1945 to 1975.
Charles Moore (1931–2010), photographed a 1958 argument between Martin Luther King Jr. and two policemen. His photographs were distributed nationally by the Associated Press, and published in Life, and he began traveling throughout the South documenting the civil rights movement. Moore's most famous photograph, Birmingham, depicts demonstrators being attacked by firemen wielding high-pressure hoses. U.S. Senator Jacob Javits said that Moore's pictures "helped to spur passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964."[12]
Gordon Parks (1912–2006), assigned by Life in 1963 to travel with Malcolm X and document the civil rights movement.[13] He was also involved with the movement on a personal level. In 1947, Gordon Parks documented Drs. Kenneth B. and Mamie Phipps Clark's "Doll Test", pictures that were published in Ebony that year. The Doll Test was used as evidence in the Brown v. Board of Education trial and helped sway the ruling. Parks also photographed civil rights demonstrations, including the 1963 March on Washington, and documented Jim Crow Segregation for Life magazine.
Steve Schapiro (1934–2022), photographed key moments of the civil rights movement such as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the Selma to Montgomery marches. He also documented Mississippi Freedom Summer.[14] Schapiro's photo of John Lewis was the cover image of Time after Lewis's death.[15]
Flip Schulke (1930–2008), freelance photographer who traveled with Martin Luther King Jr. and took around 11,000 photographs of him.[16][17]
Robert A. Sengstacke (1943–2017), award-winning photojournalist during the Civil Rights era. He made portraits of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and other prominent civil rights leaders.
Art Shay (1922–2018), photographed the Chicago Freedom Movement. Working freelance for Life, the Saturday Evening Post, Time and other magazines, Shay started covering integration issues in 1953. In 1959 he covered the Deerfield Housing Crisis, in 1961 block busting, then the 1963 Freedom March, school boycotts, and Martin Luther King's 1966 Chicago Freedom Movement rally at Soldier Field.[18][19] Shay also covered the 1966 Chicago and the 1967 Detroit riots.
Maria Varela (born 1940), worked for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee from 1963 to 1967 primarily in Alabama and Mississippi supporting civil rights organizers with educational materials and photographs. Varela authored several photo-based publications and filmstrips ranging from voter education training manuals to organizing co-operatives and farm-worker unions.[22] Some of her movement photography appeared in La Revista Porque (Mexico City), Chicano Press Association newspapers, numerous civil rights movement texts and photo exhibits. Three exhibits, "We’ll Never Turn Back" (1980) and "This Light of Ours" (2013–14) and "Time to Get Ready" are traveling extensively across the US.
Grey Villet (1927–2000), and other photographers and reporters, was assaulted in Little Rock, Arkansas, while covering protests after the Federal Government's attempts to desegregate public schools. After being attacked by segregationists he was arrested by the police and held for a few hours on unspecified charges.[23] Villet also became notable for his photographs of Mildred and Richard Loving whose interracial marriage was declared illegal in Virginia. After a lengthy legal battle, the Supreme Court eventually found unanimously in their favor in 1967. Villet was assigned to the story in 1965 and spent two weeks with the Lovings.[24]
Cecil J. Williams (born 1937), began photographing the origin of the civil rights movement in Clarendon County, and Orangeburg, South Carolina; and at eleven years old, beginning with Thurgood Marshall, arriving by train in Charleston, South Carolina to argue the Briggs v. Elliott case. His collection of nearly one million film images is perhaps one of the largest in the world. At fourteen years old, he became a freelancer for JET. Later, he regularly contributed to the Afro-American, Pittsburgh Courier, and other weekly publications. Some of the notable events he photographed include: the Briggs v. Elliott petitioners, Elloree School Teachers,[25] Minister Billy Graham's 1957 New York Crusade at Madison Square Garden, Harvey Gantt being admitted to Clemson University, John F. Kennedy's presidential announcement, the Orangeburg Massacre, and the Charleston Hospital Workers Strike. His photograph of Coretta Scott King involved in the Charleston Hospital Workers Strike was featured on the front cover of JET. Other photographs he made appeared in Newsweek, TIME, and the Associated Press. He was twice arrested and jailed for photographing student demonstrations. In 2015, he invented the FilmToaster, a fast camera scanning instrument, to scan his mammoth film collection. Many of his iconic images from the era of civil rights have appeared on the covers of numerous historical publications.
Ernest Withers (1922–2007), photographed African American history in the segregated South for over 60 years, including the Montgomery bus boycott, the Emmett Till murder trial, Sanitation Worker's Strike, Negro league baseball, and musicians related to Memphis blues and Memphis soul.
Cox, Julian; Jacob, Rebekah;& Karales, Monica (Andrew Young, forward), CONTROVERSY AND HOPE: The Civil Rights Photographs of James Karales, The University of South Carolina Press, 2013.
Davidson, Bruce, Time of Change: Civil Rights Photographs 1961–1965, Los Angeles: St. Ann's Press, 2002.
Faces of Freedom Summer, University of Alabama Press, 2001.
Freed, Leonard, Black in White America, New York: Grossman, 1967.
Kasher, Steven, The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954–68, New York: Abbeville, 1996.
Lyon, Danny, Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Moore, Charles, Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore, New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1991.
Williams, Cecil J., Out of the Box in Dixie: Cecil Williams' Photography of the South Carolina Events That Changed America, 2006, Cecil Williams Photography/Publishing; "Freedom and Justice", 1995, Mercer University Press; "Orangeburg 1968: A Place and Time Remembered", 2009
Herron, Matt, "Mississippi Eyes: The story and photography of the Southern Documentary Project", 2014, Talking Fingers Press
Williams, Cecil J., Out of the Box in Dixie: Cecil Williams' Photography of the South Carolina Events That Changed America, 2006, Cecil Williams Photography/Publishing
