Remembering Steve Schapiro

Steve Schapiro at one of his many exhibitions held at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM

Photo by ©R. David Marks

Steve Schapiro died peacefully on January 15 surrounded by his wife, Maura Smith, and son, Theophilus Donoghue in Chicago, Illinois after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 87. 

The New York Times: Steve Schapiro, Photojournalist Who Bore Witness, Dies at 87

“You didn’t get the sense from his photographs that Steve was even in the room,” Sidney Monroe, co-owner of a photojournalism gallery in Santa Fe, N.M., that exhibited Mr. Schapiro’s work, said in an interview.

CNN: 'His images moved minds': The legacy of Steve Schapiro

BLIND Magazine: Steve Schapiro, Chronicler of 20th Century America, Dies At 87

The Times UK: Steve Schapiro obituary - Acclaimed photographer whose subjects ranged from Martin Luther King to Barbra Streisand

People: Steve Schapiro, Photojournalist Who Shot PEOPLE's First Cover, Dies at 87: 'His Talent Defied Genres'

Chicago Sun Times: Photographer Steve Schapiro, whose photos captured civil rights, arts ‘time capsules,’ dead at 87

Los Angeles Times: Photojournalist Steve Schapiro, who died last week, left images that reach into the soul of history

ArtDaily: Photographer Steve Schapiro has died at age 87

Pro Photo Daily: What We Learned This Week: Steve Shapiro, Acclaimed Photojournalist, Dies at 87

Chicago Tribune:  Chicago photographer Steve Schapiro is dead at 87. He captured the world with his camera, from the civil rights era to De Niro.

Variety: Steve Schapiro, Photojournalist and Film Industry Photographer, Dies at 87

The Guardian UK: Ali to Andy W: Steve Schapiro’s life in photography – in pictures

Washington Post: Steve Schapiro, Prize Winning Photographer, Dies at 87

ABC News: A prize-winning photographer whose indelible images ranged from civil rights marches to the set of “The Godfather” and other films, Steve Schapiro has died at age 87

US News: Steve Schapiro, Prize-Winning Photographer, Dies at 87

Hollywood Reporter: Steve Schapiro, Acclaimed Photojournalist, Dies at 87

February 10 in Santa Fe: Steve Schapiro, "Eyewitness"

Steve Schapiro: CORE "Stall-In", 1964 World's Fair, New York

STEVE SCHAPIRO: EYEWITNESS

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is honored to announce an extensive exhibition of photographs from key moments in the Civil Rights movement by one of the most respected American documentary photographers, Steve Schapiro. The exhibition opens with a reception for Steve Schapiro on Friday, February 10, from 5 to 7 PM, and will continue through April 23.

Schapiro’s photographs are made more timely with the recent Presidential campaign and election. President Trump’s recent criticisms of civil-rights leader John Lewis drew widespread criticism and have done little to reassure those uneasy about the transition from the nation’s first black president to a president still struggling to connect with most nonwhite voters. This was the first presidential election since the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and there are lingering concerns Attorney General Nominee Jeff Sessions may further roll-back civil-rights protections.

“EYEWITNESS” celebrates the completion of a project based on James Baldwin’s 1963 book, “The Fire Next Time”. Steve Schapiro’s photographs documenting the civil rights movement from 1963 – 1968 are paired with essays from “The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin in a major book to be published in March.

Schapiro covered many stories related the Civil Rights movement, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the push for voter registration and the Selma to Montgomery march. Called by Life to Memphis after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Schapiro produced some of the most iconic images of that tragic event. When the civil rights movement came to a crossroads during the Selma-to-Montgomery march of 1965, photographer Steve Schapiro captured an iconic moment from the march in an image of Dr. Martin Luther King linking arms with fellow civil rights activists John Lewis, the Rev. Jesse Douglas, James Forman and Ralph Abernathy. The image captures the leadership, the unity, and the strength of the civil rights leaders, who faced violence from law enforcement as well as death threats during their fight for voting rights for African Americans.

Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King Marching for Voting Rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas, James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, 1965

Schapiro discovered photography at age of nine at a summer camp. Excited by the camera's potential, he would spend the next decades prowling the streets of his native New York trying to emulate the work of the great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. His first formal education in photography came when he studied under the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith, and shared Smith's passion for black and white documentary work. From the beginning of Schapiro’s career, he had already set a mission for himself: to chronicle the “American Life”. 

Schapiro spent several weeks in the South with James Baldwin and became involved in many civil rights stories; he traveled with Bobby Kennedy on his Senate campaign and Presidential campaign; and did photo essays on Haight Ashbury, the Pine Ridge Sioux Indian Reservation, and Protest in America. He photographed Andy Warhol and the New York art scene, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, poodles, beauty parlors, and performances at the famous Apollo Theater in New York. He also collaborated on projects for record covers and related art. As picture magazines declined in the 1970's and 80's he continued documentary work but also produced advertising material, publicity stills and posters for films, including, The Godfather, Rambo, The Way We Were, Risky Business, Taxi Driver, and Midnight Cowboy. From 2000 through 2003 he was a contributing photographer for American Radio Works (Minneapolis Public Radio) producing on-line documentary projects. Schapiro has photographed major stories for most of the world’s most prominent magazines, including Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, People, and Paris Match.

Since the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s seminal 1969 exhibition, Harlem on my Mind, which included a number of his images, Schapiro’s photographs have appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions world-wide. The High Museum of Art’s Road to Freedom, which traveled widely in the United States, includes numerous of his photographs from the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. Recent one-man shows have been mounted in Los Angeles, London, Santa Fe, Amsterdam, Paris, and Berlin. Steve has had large museum retrospective exhibitions in the United States, Spain, Russia, and Germany.

Schapiro continues to work in a documentary vein. His recent series’ of photographs have been about India, Music Festivals, Mercicordia, and Black Lives Matter. Schapiro’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Museum, the High Museum of Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum and the Getty Museum. He has recently received the James Joyce Award and a fellowship to University College in Dublin.

 

Gallery hours are 10 to 5 daily.. Admission is free. For further information, please call: 505.992.0800; E-mail: info@monroegallery.com.

SELMA: 50 YEARS

Monroe Gallery of Photography

Booth #203  Photo LA

January 15 - 18, 2015

 

Monroe Gallery of Photography will be exhibiting a specially selected collection of civil rights photographs from the 1956 Selma March to Ferguson, Missouri and present day in booth #119

during the AIPAD Photography Show April 16 - 19, 2015.

All photographs by Steve Schapiro

Onlookers watch the Selma-to-Montgomery march pass thru

Montgomery, 1965

On the Road, the Selma March, 1965

"Vote", Selma March,1965

Boy with Flag, Selma March, 1965

Flag, Selma March, 1965

Martin Luther King Marching for Voting Rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas,

James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, 1965

Martin Luther King, Selma, Alabama, 1965

Martin Luther King, Selma, Alabama, 1965

Martin Luther King, Jr., (Megaphone), Selma, Alabama, 1965

Rosa Parks, Selma March, 1965

Martin Luther King, Andrew Young, John Lewis, Selma, 1965

Entering Montgomery, Selma March, 1965

Entering Montgomery, Selma March, 1965

Girls Watching the Selma March, Alabama, 1965

Selma Marchers Wrapped in Plastic to Protect Against the

 Rain, 1965

Related: The New Yorker: The Long Road From Selma to Montgomery

Steve Schapiro: "The Long Road"

On the road, Selma March, 1965

© Steve Schapiro

The New Yorker has a portfolio of unpublished photographs from the 1965 Selma March by Steve Schapiro.


"A half century ago, Martin Luther King, Jr., receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, in Oslo, spoke of the “creative battle” that twenty-two million black men and women in the United States were waging against “the starless midnight of racism.” A few months later, in March, 1965, that battle came to Selma, Alabama, the birthplace of the White Citizens’ Council. The issue was voting rights. As King pointed out, there were more blacks in jail in the city than there were on the voting rolls. James Baldwin, who was among the marchers, had written, “I could not suppress the thought that this earth had acquired its color from the blood that had dripped down from these trees.” The series of marches there––the first was Bloody Sunday, a bloody encounter with a racist police force armed with bullwhips and cattle prods; the last, the fifty-four-mile procession from Selma to the State House, in Montgomery––pushed Lyndon Johnson to send voting-rights legislation to Congress. The nonviolent discipline of the marchers, the subject of a new film by Ava DuVernay, and portrayed here in Steve Schapiro’s photographs of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, became such a resonant chapter in the black freedom struggle that Barack Obama, in 2007, went to Selma to speak, at Brown Chapel, just weeks after declaring for the Presidency. Almost eight years later, as Selma is being commemorated, demonstrators against racial injustice are employing as a despairing slogan the last words of Eric Garner, an African-American man on Staten Island in the grip of a police choke hold: “I can’t breathe.”"

CBS News: 50 Years Later, Civil Rights

A half-century after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the landmark Civil Rights Act, CBS News' Bob Schieffer hosted a symposium on Americans' historic fight against segregation, and the continuing struggle for equal rights for all. In this preview, the tumultuous summer of 1964 is reviewed, when three civil rights workers went missing. It also explores the impact of the civil rights movement through first-hand accounts of the activists and public figures who continue to fight for social justice today

"CBS News: 50 Years Later, Civil Rights," moderated by Bob Schieffer features civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, U.S. Rep. John Lewis, actress Whoopi Goldberg and others. Watch the full symposium here, and more here.

STEVE SCHAPIRO: Once Upon A Time In America

Steve Schapiro: Entering Montgomery, Selma March, 1965

One of the most respected American documentary photographers, Steve Schapiro has photographed American history, and the fractured fabric of contemporary American life, over the last five decades. The list of people Steve Schapiro has photographed during his career reads like a Who's Who of the most influential politicians, celebrities and newsmakers in contemporary American history.


Join us Saturday, July 5, from 5 - 7 PM for a public reception with Steve Schapiro for the opening of the new exhibition "Once Upon A Time in America".


Steve Schapiro discovered photography at age of nine at a summer camp. Excited by the camera's potential, he would spend the next decades prowling the streets of his native New York trying to emulate the work of the great French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson. Schapiro was a disciple of the great photographer W. Eugene Smith, and shared Smith's passion for black and white documentary work. From the beginning of Schapiro's career, he had already set a mission for himself: to chronicle the "American Life". His career in photography began in 1960 with personal documentary projects on "Arkansas Migrant Workers" and "Narcotics Addiction in East Harlem". Schapiro became involved in many civil rights stories including the Selma March and covering Martin Luther King; he traveled with Bobby Kennedy on his Senate campaign and Presidential campaign; and did photo essays on Haight Ashbury, the Pine Ridge Sioux Indian Reservation, and Protest in America. He photographed Andy Warhol and the New York art scene, John and Jacqueline Kennedy, poodles, beauty parlors, and performances at the famous Apollo Theater in New York. He also collaborated on projects for record covers and related art. As picture magazines declined in the 1970's and 80's he continued documentary work but also produced advertising material, publicity stills and posters for films, including, The Godfather, Rambo, The Way We Were, Risky Business, Taxi Driver, and Midnight Cowboy.

Related: The Santa Fe Reporter  Once Upon a Time… Veteran photog Steve Schapiro serves up poignant history

Images Of Civil Rights Era Make Up UConn Museum Exhibit

Via The Hartford Courant


By SUSAN DUNNE, sdunne@courant.com         
January 19, 2014
           

Just about every exhibit of photographs focusing on the Civil Rights movement features images of the big names: Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Benjamin Hooks, James Baldwin, the Little Rock Nine.


The show that opens Tuesday at The William Benton Museum of Art in Storrs has pictures of those people. But the real stars of "Making the Movement Move: Photography, Student Activism and Civil Rights" are the nameless activists in the trenches who marched, sat in, got arrested and were jailed.


"You see a much broader picture of the movement, with some events much more quiet and intimate," said Ally Johnson, curator of the exhibit. "The mainstream press typically got the more striking images, the fire hoses and the dog attacks, the aggressive images, but Danny Lyon got the calmer images, the meetings, the everyday activities."


Fifty photos by Lyon, on loan to UConn from alumni Sheldron and Helen Seplowitz of Stamford, are the core of the show, which also has 10 photos by Ernest Withers. Lyon was a staff photographer of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Withers was a photographer for black newspapers.


The most haunting photo in the exhibit shows more than a dozen teenage girls who had been arrested for demonstrating in Americus, Ga., in 1963. They were held without charges in a jail outside Leesburg, without access to bedding, toilets or decent food.
"I am 13 years old and was in Leesburg stockade from August 31 to September 8," recalled one of them, Henrietta Fuller, whose quote is on an exhibit wall. "I urinated where the water from the shower drains down. Some of the girls used a piece of cardboard that came from the boxes, the cardboard boxes, that the hamburgers were brought in."


Lyon had to take the photo secretly, and it helped get the girls out of the jail.
Another young woman, whose name is lost to history, is seen clutching the bars of a police van after being arrested. Youths mill around outside a restaurant that barred them admittance, and other youths sit at a diner, not being served. In another photo, several white men stand behind a sign reading "Private Pool Members Only," while a line of black men tries unsuccessfully to enter. Protesters are seen being carried away by police, some passively, some fighting.


Another Lyon photo shows that the movement was not just black vs. white. The 1963 photo taken in Atlanta shows a white woman berating a crowd of white men who were kicking and harassing student demonstrators and burning them with cigarettes.
"She stepped into the midst of the mob…'You should be ashamed of yourselves,' she yelled at them," Lyon is quoted in the exhibit. "Then from the back of the crowd someone yelled, 'If you feel that way, why don't you marry one of them?,' and everyone laughed. The heroine ... sat down and joined the demonstrators."


A black church choir sings "This Little Light of Mine" in another photograph. An audio component of the exhibit lets visitors hear a recording made that night of the choir singing that song.


Not all the photos have people in them, but are disturbing nonetheless. An image of white and colored drinking fountains side by side in a Georgia courthouse shows not just that separate but equal was a myth, but also that such facilities were set up to intimidate AfricanAmericans. They had to bend down farther to get their water, at a much smaller fountain, in uncomfortably close proximity to the white fountain. A user of the white fountain could block access to the colored fountain.


Even more chilling are images of white Southern police officers. One drags casually on a cigarette while carrying away a protester. Some stand with firearms at the ready, watching protesters. In one photo, a cop flips off Lyon, and another grabs his crotch and makes a face.


A complementary exhibit upstairs from the Lyon-Withers show is a series of photos taken at UConn in April 1974, when students sat in at the Wilbur Cross Library to demand equal opportunity guidelines, affirmative action and a larger African American cultural center on campus. Johnson said the Benton hopes people who went to UConn at that time come see the exhibit and help curators identify the people in the photos.


"Making The Movement Move: Photography, Student Activism and Civil Rights" is at the Benton Museum, 245 Glenbrook Road, on the campus of the University of Connecticut in Storrs, from Tuesday until March 30. The opening reception is Thursday from 4:30 to 7 p.m. Gallery hours are Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 1 to 4:30 p.m. Admission is free. More at http://www.thebenton.org.

The Movement: Bob Adelman and Civil Rights Era Photography

The Movement: Bob Adelman and Civil Rights Era Photography
January 19, 2014 – May 17, 2014
Organized by NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale as part of its Foto Fort Lauderdale initiative and curated by Peter Boswell.

Via NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale will present an exhibition featuring the imagery of renowned photographer Bob Adelman. Adelman’s unique vantage point at the forefront of the Civil Rights movement led him to produce some of that era’s most iconic images. The Movement: Bob Adelman and Civil Rights Era Photography, presented by AutoNation, will be on view at NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale from January 19 – May 17, 2014. Featuring 100 black-and-white and color photographs, the exhibition will provide a context in which viewers can revisit these years of struggle and consider how and why certain images have become emblematic of the era.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum will present a series of special programs and events.

Between 1963 and 1968, Bob Adelman was a photographer for the Congress of Racial Equality, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and other civil rights organizations. His work granted him unique access to the movement’s most important events and figures, and he forged close ties with such civil rights leaders as Martin Luther King, Jr. , Malcolm X, John Lewis, and James Baldwin. His work was featured in major publications of the civil rights period.

Events documented in the exhibition include: the Freedom Rides; the 1963 Birmingham demonstrations during which demonstrators were hosed and attacked by police dogs; the 1963 March on Washington, which culminated in Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech; voter registration drives; the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March; and Martin Luther King,Jr funeral. A number of the photographs on view in the exhibition have never before been published.

Adelman has photographed cover stories for many magazines including Esquire, Time, Life, New York, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, and Paris Match, and has photographed or written more than a dozen books and produced many others, including King: The Photobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Abrams, 2004). Adelman has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEA grant, and several Art Directors Club Awards. His photographs have been exhibited the Smithsonian, the American Federation of Arts, and other institutions, and are included in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He currently lives in Miami Beach.

The Movement: Bob Adelman and Civil Rights Era Photography is presented by AutoNation. Additional support provided by the Community Foundation of Broward; Simkins Hollis Law Group, PC, in loving memory of Dr. Anna Atkins Simkins; the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Celebration Committee, Inc.; W Fort Lauderdale and Media Partner CBS4.

Symposium: With Their Own Eyes: Photographers Witness the March on Washington

Via Library of Congress
Library of Congress Holds Symposium on Jan. 13

With Their Own Eyes: Photographers Witness the March on Washington

A Library of Congress symposium on Jan. 13 will bring together photographers who took pictures at the March on Washington more than 50 years ago.

"With Their Own Eyes: Photographers Witness the March on Washington" is being held in conjunction with the Library’s exhibition "A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington," which is on view through March 1.

The symposium will be held from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 13, in the Whittall Pavilion on the ground floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public. No tickets or reservations are needed.

Photographers featured in the exhibition, along with relatives of photographers no longer alive, will take part in the program. The participants include Bob Adelman; Theresa Lynn Carter, the daughter of Roosevelt Carter; Brigitte Freed, the widow of Leonard Freed; and David Johnson. They will share their accounts of the day and discuss how the march changed their lives. Keith Jenkins will moderate the discussion.

The program will begin with a welcome from Kim Phan, president of the Friends of the Law Library of Congress, which is co-sponsoring the symposium with the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division. The event is made possible through generous donations from Roberta I. Shaffer; the Leica Store in Washington, D.C. and the Friends of the Law Library. Speakers at the Symposium

• Bob Adelman is a photographer known for his images of the Civil Rights Movement. His interest in social and political events of the day drew him to the sit-ins staged by young students across the American South. In the early 1960s, he volunteered to photograph demonstrations for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He was close friends with Martin Luther King, Jr. and U.S. Rep. John Lewis. Adelman continues to be involved with civil rights issues and the human condition.
• Theresa Lynn Carter is the daughter of Roosevelt Carter (1926-1981), who traveled to Washington with a church group from Columbus, Ohio. He brought along his camera to capture a personal view of the day. He focused on the thousands of faces along the March route from every walk of life, including the many celebrities.
• Brigitte Freed is the widow of Leonard Freed (1929-2006) and was his darkroom assistant. The couple was based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, until a photograph taken by Leonard Freed of a black American soldier guarding the Berlin Wall compelled him to return home to the United States to document the civil rights struggle in 1963. Freed’s photographs from 1963 to 1965 were published in the now-classic book "Black in White America."
• David Johnson is a professional photographer who credits Ansel Adams as his major influence. Johnson documented black life and culture in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. He attended the March on Washington as a delegate from the Bay Area NAACP and covered the event for a local newspaper.
• Keith Jenkins, director of photography at the National Geographic Society, is a former supervising senior producer for multimedia at National Public Radio. Prior to working at NPR, Jenkins was the first director of photography at AOL. He spent 13 years at the Washington Post in various positions, from staff photographer to photography editor for the Washington Post Magazine and Washingtonpost.com. Earlier, Jenkins worked as a staff photographer for the Boston Globe.

After the symposium, tours of the exhibition will be offered. "A Day Like No Other: Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington" which opened on Aug. 28, 2013 and closes on March 1, 2014, consists of 40 iconic black-and-white images that mark what Martin Luther King, Jr., called "the greatest demonstration for freedom in the nation’s history." The photographs, part of the Library’s Prints and Photographs Division collections, convey the immediacy of being at the march and the excitement of those who were there. A video-screen display in the exhibition features another 75 images.

The Prints and Photographs Division includes more than 15 million photographs, drawings and prints form the 15th century to the present day. International in scope, these visual collections represent a uniquely rich array of human experience, knowledge, creativity and achievement, touching on almost every realm of endeavor: science, art, invention, government and political struggle, and the recording of history. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/print/.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and the largest library in the world, holds more than 155 million items in various languages, disciplines and formats. The Library serves the U.S. Congress and the nation both on-site in its reading rooms on Capitol Hill and through its award-winning website at www.loc.gov.

Ernest Withers: A Life's Work Exhibit Opens Oct. 4, 2013

Ernest C. Withers: Sanitation Workers assemble in front of Clayborn Temple for a solidarity march, Memphis, TN, March 28, 1968 ©The Withers Trust



Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present "Ernest Withers: A Life's Work". The exhibition opens with a public reception on Friday, October 4, from 5 - 7 PM with very special guest Rosalind Withers, Ernest's daughter and President/Board Chairman of the Withers Collection Trust. The exhibition continues through November 24, 2013.

Ernest C. Withers was, in his own words, 'a news photographer', 'recording events that were taking place.' Momentous events were occurring and he recorded them for newspapers and magazines across the country, covering dramatic civil rights stories, Memphis as the epicenter of the musical life of the nation, and the plethora of outstanding African American players that gave rise to Negro League baseball. His life's work is an encompassing and moving chronicle of the great American crusade of the second half of the Twentieth Century.

Ernest C. Withers' interest in photography began in his eighth grade year at a Memphis school. More than seventy years later, he continued to maintain a studio on Beale Street - once the Memphis epicenter of the musical life of the nation. After graduation from high school in 1941, Withers joined the army. He attended the Army School of Photography and later operated a freelance business photographing white soldiers stationed in Saipan. Withers died October 15, 2007, following complications from a stroke.

With his photographs appearing in Life, Time, Newsweek, Jet, and the Defender, among many others, Withers' more than 50 years of images validates the message emblazoned on his business card: PICTURES TELL THE STORY. (More)

Related: Monroe Gallery of Photography at the DC Fine Art Photography Fair Oct 4-6.

One Life: Martin Luther King Jr.

Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy ride the first integrated bus in Montgomery, Alabama
Ernest Withers (1922–2007)

Gelatin silver print, 1956 (printed later) King proved to be the ideal choice to orchestrate and sustain the Montgomery bus boycott. As a relative newcomer to Montgomery, he was able to bring together all factions of the black community without regard to past rivalries. Through inspirational addresses delivered at mass meetings in Montgomery’s black churches, King galvanized support for the boycott and clearly articulated the case for nonviolent action, declaring, “We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love; we must meet physical force with soul force.” He found a strong ally in fellow Montgomery minister Ralph Abernathy, and during the course of the boycott the two men forged a strong working relationship and a deep friendship. Continuing for an unprecedented 381 days, the bus boycott ended only after the United States Supreme Court ruled bus segregation unconstitutional. When the first integrated bus rolled through Montgomery on December 21, 1956, King and Abernathy sat side by side.

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

June 28, 2013 through June 1, 2014


Selected Portraits / Curator's Statement
As we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, I believe it is important to remember King not merely as a dreamer but as a doer. In his thirteen years of public life as an advocate for civil rights, economic opportunity, and world peace, King motivated others not only by communicating his vision for a brighter future but by acting boldly to challenge injustice. Despite enormous odds and the ever-present risk of failure, King led by example, exhibiting courage and character as he maintained his steadfast commitment to nonviolent resistance and direct action. Anyone can dream of a better and more just world. Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated his life to making that dream a reality.

—Ann M. Shumard, Senior Curator of Photographs

 

Martin Luther King Marching for Voting Rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas, James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, 1965

Steve Schapiro

This exhibition has been funded by the Guenther and Siewchin Yong Sommer Endowment Fund and an anonymous donor.


http://npg.si.edu/exhibit/MLK/portraits.html

The Washington Post: Martin Luther King Jr. exhibit is brief but powerful

On this day, in 1961, thirteen civil rights activists dubbed Freedom Riders began a bus trip through the south

 

Via The Guardian

Jim Powell  guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 May 2013 05.22 EDT

Freedom riders - picture of the day

A photographic highlight selected by the picture desk. On this day in 1961 the 'Freedom Riders' began their bus trip through the American South. Thirteen Freedom Riders left Washington, DC, in two separate buses with the aim of challenging segregated public transport in the South

Freedom Riders Julia Aaron and David Dennis sitting on board an interstate bus escorted by two National Guardsmen holding bayonets, on their way from Montgomery, Alabama, to Jackson, Mississippi

Paul Schutzer/Time & Life Pictures/Getty


Related:  On this day, in 1961, thirteen civil rights activists dubbed Freedom Riders began a bus trip through the south, carrying on the fight for justice sparked by Martin Luther King Jr.

 Via PBS:   Freedom Riders is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story from award-winning filmmaker Stanley Nelson of this six months in 1961 that chanved America forever. This saga, based on Raymond Arsenault's book of the same name, features testimony from a fascinating cast of central characters: the Riders themselves, state and federal government officials, and journalists who witnessed the Rides firsthand.

Watch a preview of Freedom Riders below

Watch Video Visit Website

Birmingham Students Reenact Historic March, 50 Years Later

1963: 50 Years Ago



Via NPR: Listen here

"In Birmingham, Alabama, today, young people marched peacefully through downtown. It was a reenactment of not-so-peaceful civil rights marches 50 years ago, when a Children's Crusade drew brutal resistance from segregationists and changed the heart of the nation."

NPR's Debbie Elliott has this look back.

DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINEToday, Birmingham's students had permission to miss class for their historic march.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Wenonah, file behind the foot soldiers. Center Point High School, behind Wenonah. Back up this way.
ELLIOTT: The youth lined up in the street beside Kelly Ingram Park, where statues depict the police dogs and fire hoses that young marchers faced there 50 years ago.
The Children's Crusade was part of the Birmingham campaign, a calculated move by civil rights leaders to take their fight to a city so violently opposed to integration its nickname was Bombingham.
Here's the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. explaining the strategy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: And I have the feeling that if we can get a breakthrough in Birmingham and really break down the walls of segregation, it will demonstrate to the whole South - at least the hard-core South - that it can no longer resist.
ELLIOTT: But in Birmingham, the resistance was fierce, led by Police Commissioner Bull Connor, the hardest of hard-core segregationists.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED AUDIO)
BULL CONNOR: You can never whip these birds if you don't keep you and them separate. I found that out in Birmingham. You've got to keep the white and the black separate.
ELLIOTT: The student marches in the spring of 1963 were just the beginning of a violent year that would culminate in the Ku Klux Klan bombing of 16th Street Baptist Church, where four black girls were killed. The scenes from Birmingham galvanized the nation and prompted President Kennedy to begin work on the Civil Rights Act. Now, 50 years later, the city is commemorating its crucial role.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Can somebody say Fred Shuttlesworth?
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Fred Shuttlesworth.
ELLIOTT: At this city hall ceremony earlier this year, foot soldiers of the Birmingham movement were honored with the inaugural Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth Flame Award named for the local preacher who convinced Martin Luther King to launch the Birmingham campaign.
Honoree Tom Ellison says he started marching when he was just 5 years old and hasn't stopped since. Ellison was a classmate of Addie Mae Collins, one of the girls killed in the church bombing. And his father was a local minister active in the movement. He says the city has come a long way.
TOM ELLISON: Just even being in city hall sometimes is a miracle to me because I lived down town. I lived a block away from 16th Street Baptist Church, and we knew not to even come this way.
ELLIOTT: Ellison's experiences being jailed and beaten in the '60s led him to his career as a medical doctor because he says local doctors back then were afraid to come and treat injured marchers.
ELLISON: You weren't going to risk the rage of Bull Connor to come down and help.
(LAUGHTER)
ELLISON: So most often people just went home beaten and bruised and bleeding.
ELLIOTT: Leaders say this 50th anniversary year is a chance to acknowledge the culpability of the city's institutions that furthered segregation, for instance, the local newspaper.
BARNETT WRIGHT: The Birmingham News really did not do what it was supposed to do in 1963. The newspaper failed in its mission.
ELLIOTT: Barnett Wright is a reporter with the News today.
WRIGHT: Well, one example is on May 2nd when thousands of students left school to march. The Birmingham News did not put that story on the front page.
ELLIOTT: The top stories instead were about a pet snake and two people who scaled a mountain in Katmandu.
WRIGHT: So a story 8,200 miles away from the front doors of The Birmingham News was more important than a life-changing event.
ELLIOTT: Wright has compiled a book called "1963: How the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement Changed America and the World."
Today, hundreds of students stretched for two blocks to reenact the city's watershed events. Woodlawn High School student Reagan Harris was among the marchers.
REAGAN HARRIS: I'm very blessed to be here today to do this because back then we couldn't even cross the street with each other. But now, everyone is holding hands and rejoicing together. So I think it's a big responsibility to come out here and do this today.
ELLIOTT: The march was upbeat, more like a parade as a college marching band led the procession. A far cry from the billy clubs, police dogs and fire hoses 50 years ago.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News.

Copyright © 2013 NPR.

Related:

 April was a cruel month for black people in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. So was May, and the months that followed, culminating in the explosion of a bomb in an church that September that killed four girls. Fifty years ago today, on May 2, 1963, teen-agers and children, some as young as six, marched in Birmingham to protest segregation. Many were arrested for parading without a permit, but the marchers came back the next day. They were viciously knocked down in the streets by torrents of water from fire hoses wielded by white policemen, were hit with batons or set upon by police dogs. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been arrested in the city on April 12th—he was held for a week, during which he wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”— referred to them as “the disinherited children of God.” The marches became known as the Children’s Crusade.

Memories of that tumultuous time came back this past weekend, during a three-day symposium marking the fiftieth anniversary of the Birmingham campaign sponsored by the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. Birmingham, 1963, was known as Bombingham: there had been some fifty dynamite attacks on black homes since the end of the Second World War. Birmingham had another label: the most segregated city in the South. Black people could spend their money in downtown stores but were not being hired or served. Continue reading  Via The New Yorker

1963: "Pictures Paint A Thousand Words"

 

 

 

Carl Mydans ©Time Inc. 

On the 6:25 from Grand Central to Stamford, CT, November 22, 1963

 

Via The Albuquerque Journal

By Kate McGraw / For the Journal 

Friday, Apr 19, 2013

 

 

It is hard to believe it has been 50 years since 1963. That tumultuous year seems engraved in our memories. The Monroe Gallery of Photography on Don Gaspar is opening “Photographs from 1963,”a major exhibition of shots from one of the most pivotal years in U. S. history. The exhibition opens with a public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. today.

Gallery co-owner Michelle Monroe said 1963 was a year of change: “change in leadership and social change.”

“1963 ran the gamut of human emotion and human endeavor,” Monroe said in an exhibition statement. “It was a year that began with high hopes for easing of international tensions, a year that sustained a terrible period of shock and mourning and ended with a nation and a world community coming to understand a new maturity in its ability to cope with sudden and enormously difficult circumstances.”

Ernst Haas

Martin Luther King, Jr., Birmingham, 1963

“As the year began, George C. Wallace was sworn in as governor of Alabama, and during his inauguration address he stated, ‘Segregation now; segregation tomorrow; segregation forever!’,” Monroe recalled. “The year would continue: the U.S. performs the first nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site; the Beatles release ‘Please Please Me;’ the Birmingham police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful demonstrators; and then there are church bomb attacks in Birmingham and, later, riots. President John F. Kennedy signs a law for equal pay for equal work for men and women as Gov. Wallace tries to prevent blacks registering at University of Alabama. Gov Wallace later prevents the integration of Tuskegee High School as James Meredith is awarded a bachelor’s degree by the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), becoming the first black man to graduate from the school, and John F. Kennedy says segregation is morally wrong and that it is ‘time to act.’ Just hours after President Kennedy’s speech, civil rights activist Medgar Evers pulls into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers and is struck in the back with a bullet and killed.

Charles Moore

Fire hoses aimed at Demonstrators, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

 

“In 1963, President Kennedy visits West Berlin and delivers the ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (I am a Berliner) speech; the major league baseball All Star MVP is Willie Mays of the San Francisco Giants; the Los Angeles Dodgers sweep the New York Yankees in the 60th World Series; ‘Cleopatra’ premieres in New York City, and 1963 draws to a close with President Kennedy assassinated. And on Dec. 26 the Beatles release ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’/'I Saw Her Standing There.’

Elizabeth Taylor, "Cleopatra", 1963

©mptv

 

“These and other events marked the year as a benchmark of unrest, tumult, and change, and all are represented in ‘Photographs from 1963,’” Monroe added. “We have seen many of these photographs numerous times in newspapers, magazines, books and documentaries. Universally relevant, they reflect the past, the present, and the changing times. These unforgettable images are imbedded in our collective consciousness; they are defining moments chronicling our shared history. The photographers in this exhibition have captured dramatic moments in a remarkable year, and illustrate the power of photography to inform, persuade, enlighten and enrich the viewer’s life.”

Photographs in this show are the work of a select group of photojournalists, many of whom worked for TIME and LIFE magazines. They include Charles Moore, Ernest Withers, Bill Eppridge, Steve Schapiro, Bob Gomel, Francis Miller, Stan Stearns and Eddie Adams.


If you go WHAT: “Photographs from 1963″
WHEN: Today through June 30; reception 5-7 p.m. today
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar
CONTACT: (505) 992-0800

50 Years Ago: 1963

Charles Moore:   Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy Walk Toward Their Arrest, Birmingham, Alabama, April 16, 1963

Steve Schapiro: Then And Now at Kunsthalle Rostock

Muhammad Ali, Monopoly, Louisville, Kentucky from the book Steve Schapiro: Then and Now © 2012 Steve Schapiro

Via Le Journal de la Photographie


Steve Schapiro is the photographer behind countless now-classic portraits of rock stars, film stars and politicians from the 1960s and 70s. He is also an accomplished documentary photographer who recorded many of the greatest political and social upheavals of our times. While working as a 'special photographer' for the film studios, he designed several iconic film posters, most notably for Midnight Cowboy, Taxi Driver and The Godfather III. His extraordinary access has been the hallmark of an illustrious career.

Slideshow here

A retrospective of Schapiro's work opens at the Kunsthalle Rostock, Museum of Modern Art in Germany is on view until May 5, 2013. The show, which is curated by Dr. Ulrick Ptak, presents 160 photographs, many of them recently published for the first time in Schapiro's critically acclaimed retrospective Steve Schapiro: Then and Now (Hatje Cantz). The exhibition and companion book look back at Schapiro's diverse half-century career spanning 1961 to 2011. They portray the celebrities and politicians who shaped a generation, as well as new and unseen documentary work focusing on the marginalized and unidentified people on the street.

Then and Now includes whimsical portraits of the stars: Robert De Niro in full Taxi Driver combat costume, posed in front of his cab with a Mohican and an improbably chirpy smile; Jack Nicholson, nose bandaged, tongue out at the camera on the set of Chinatown; and Marlon Brando, grinning with theatrical devilishness while being made up for The Godfather.

Also gathered are portraits that include artists René Magritte, Nico, and Andy Warhol; film directors Robert Altman, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorcese; film stars Drew Barrymore, Mia Farrow, Jodie Foster, Dustin Hoffman, Sophia Loren, Paul Newman and Robert Redford; and musicians David Bowie, Ray Charles, Simon and Garfunkel, Diana Ross, Ringo Starr, Frank Sinatra, Barbara Streisand, and Ike and Tina Turner.

When Schapiro started shooting in the sixties, it was the golden age of photojournalism. Schapiro's extensive work in this genre include his depiction of migrant workers in Arkansas, drug addicts in East Harlem, freedom bus riders, the Selma March to Montgomery, Alabama with Martin Luther King, Jr., and presidential campaigns, most notably that of Robert F. Kennedy. Among his most striking works is a triptych that presents photographs Schapiro took in Memphis in 1968 the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. while on assignment for Life. Schapiro was the only photographer to capture the ominous handprint of King's assassin on the wall above the bathtub in the boarding house bathroom from where the fatal shot was fired.

The thread that connects all of Schapiro's photographs is his humanistic approach to his work. Whether shooting a celebrity or an anonymous person he is searching for that iconic moment. In his essay in the book, curator and author Matthias Harder writes that Schapiro's work reflects "the spirit of the times. It is not only his famous individual photos and groups of works from his engagement with Hollywood that ensure him a firm place in the history of photography of the twentieth and twenty first centuries, but also the diversity of his subjects and the sovereign, continuing mastery of them over such a long period of time."

Born and raised in New York City, Steve Schapiro started taking photographs at age ten while at summer camp. He attended Amherst College and graduated from Bard College, and studied photography with the legendary W. Eugene Smith. As a budding photographer, he got an early break: an assignment from Life magazine. He has never stopped working since. His work has been published in prestigious magazines and on numerous covers around the world, including Life, Look, Vanity Fair, Paris Match, People, and Rolling Stone. Schapiro's photographs were included in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's 1968 exhibition Harlem On My Mind. His work can be found in the collections of the Smithsonian, The High Museum of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery. Schapiro's recent solo shows were in Los Angeles, Amsterdam, London and Paris. The Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm, Sweden presented a retrospective of his work in the spring of 2012. An exhibition of his work entitled Schapiro: Living America opened at the Center for Photography Lumiere Brothers, Moscow in the fall of 2012, and included 180 images.


Exhibition
Steve Schapiro: Then And Now
From March 24th to May 5th, 2013
Kunsthalle Rostock
Hamburger Strasse 40
D-18069 Rostock
Germany
Telephone: 0049 381 7000

Book
Steve Schapiro: Then And Now
ISBN: 97837757344264
Hbk, 9.75 x 12.25 inches
240 pages; 174 photographs
(128 black & white; 46 color)
$70 US

I Am A Man - Then, and Now

 

Demonstrators holds a sign and chant slogans outside of a Wendy's fast food restaurant, Thursday, April 4, 2013 in New York. New York City fast food workers plan a second job action day to press for higher wages.  (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

It's been 45 years since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated during a sanitation strike in Memphis. Workers are still carrying on the civil rights leader's great struggle for economic justice today at waste facilities and fast food restaurants.

"Several pickets wore signs that said “I am a man” or “I am a woman,” echoing placards carried in Memphis in 1968."

Ernest Withers

 

 

Monroe Gallery of Photography is pleased to represent the Ernest C. Withers Collection. Please visit us in Booth #419 during the AIPAD Photography Show through April 7.

 

See Civil Rights & Memphis Music through Ernest Withers’ Eyes

Via Tennessee Trip Tales

You’ve seen Ernest C. Withers’ photographs whether or not you know his name. Last October, they showed in Berlin and draped a building façade in Washington, D.C. If you saw Katori Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, his were the images that shook the final scene. Even before his death in 2007, Withers’ work had exhibited internationally and appeared in films (see 2004’s The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington).
But Withers’ daughter, Rosalind, says her father realized the significance of his work much earlier in his career – specifically, in 1955, when his images of Emmett Till – from the boy’s brutally beaten corpse to his murder trial and funeral – were released worldwide and credited with bringing so much attention to the U.S. civil rights movement.

In a self-published “photo story” following the acquittal of Till’s alleged murderers, Withers wrote: “…we are presenting this…not in an attempt to stir up racial animosities or to question the verdict…but in the hope that [it] might serve to help our nation dedicate itself to seeing that such incidents need not occur again.”

And so his career goes, with Withers assuming the charge of telling pivotal chapters of our country’s 20th-century civil rights story in pictures. Today, you can view the most iconic images in The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery, located on the east end of the Beale Street entertainment district in a building that formerly housed Withers’ studio (and that was named for him in 1995).

The intimate space distills Withers’ vast collection into 10 major “projects.” The school desegregation section shows members of the Little Rock Nine exiting their car (in the background, white students crowd the entrance to their school in protest). A section devoted to Medgar Evers grips you in the faces of Evers’ family attending his funeral. In another section, titled “Memphis and The South,” signs say everything – in a poster held by a young, white man (“Segregation or war!”); in a placard worn by a father strolling his infant daughter (“Daddy, I want to be free too!!!!”). There are moments of triumph, too – when the Montgomery Bus Boycott set that city’s first desegregated bus rolling in 1956, Withers and his camera were there.

Even if you’ve seen these images in other contexts, you’ll immediately recall them – once seen, they never leave your consciousness. Viewed in aggregate, they seem to me even more powerful – as does Withers’ ability to capture the most critical moments at such close range. As for Withers’ near-omnipresence along the civil rights timeline, Rosalind explains simply that her father was a “journalist by nature.” She offers more on the intimacy her father achieved with his subjects, referencing several of his images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – particularly one of Dr. King lounging on his bed at the Lorraine Motel (King was in Memphis to join James Meredith’s 1966 March Against Fear). “It speaks to his character that he was able to get so close,” Rosalind believes.

It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the gallery opens and closes on Dr. King – presenting first the images from 1966 of the man in repose; ordering lunch; looking cool marching in sunglasses and a hat. By the end of the exhibit, it’s two years later, and Withers’ lens is trained on Memphis’ sanitation worker strike (source of Withers’ most recognizable image, shown below) and Dr. King’s last march; King’s blood spilled on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel; masses gathered in Memphis and Atlanta following the assassination – and the riots. It’s hard to imagine, under its present-day neon glow, a Beale Street strewn with tanks and evenly-spaced soldiers, propped with their rifles against shattered-and-boarded windows. But Withers’ images show it like it was.

 

Many of the images displayed at Memphis’ Withers Collection Museum & Gallery are the same ones you’ll see archived by the Library of Congress and incorporated into the permanent collection of Washington, D.C.’s in-progress National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian institution. Major purchases by both organizations helped to fund the creation of the Memphis museum and gallery, which opened in May 2011. Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.

 

 

The gallery takes two lighthearted turns, driven by Withers’ chronicling of baseball and music – and ultimately giving what I saw as the clearest insight into the photographer’s personal life: His series on the Negro Baseball League grew from the portraits players and fans would pay him to take at the ballpark. Withers had no studio at the time, so he would develop prints in the bathtub of his home and dry them in the family’s oven. “I still remember that smell in our house,” Rosalind laughs, but those prints helped Withers and wife Dorothy raise eight children. They were also what drew Dorothy into business with her husband. “He would print and my mom would count [the prints] and tell him how much money he would have to bring home,” Rosalind recalls.

 

The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery is located at 333 Beale Street in a building that housed Withers’ studio (and that was named for him in 1995). The now-vacant studio space still bears this window marking.

As for the music, Withers served as Stax Records’ official photographer for two decades. “He loved the blues and B.B. King was one of his best friends,” Rosalind tells me, noting that he also liked listening to Al Green and Isaac Hayes, whose relationship with Withers was so close, the performer called him “Pops.” To caption Withers’ images of Memphis music history through the 1950s and ’60s is to name-drop star after star: Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Tina Turner – though I especially enjoyed the juxtaposition of two of Withers’ images of B.B. King: one of a newbie playing in a club on Beale Street circa-1950; the other of a veteran playing in his own club on Beale Street in 1994.

“’I am a man,’ and Elvis and B.B. – that’s Memphis,” Rosalind immediately offered when we began discussing which of her father’s images should accompany this piece. Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.

What’s next for Withers?
Among individual photographers covering the civil rights movement, Withers is commonly credited with producing the largest body of work. Though her father once told her his portfolio was five million images strong, Rosalind has stopped counting (for now, at least) at one million. Of those, only a few thousand have been digitized.

The images sit – some as negatives; others as prints – in a pandemonium of file cabinets, cardboard boxes and card catalog-style units in a space near the gallery. There is some clarity in the chaos courtesy of the Withers’ original subject-matter categorization, but the takeaway is this: The images need to be legitimately archived. Rosalind has a plan for that, but not the money. During our interview, she was preparing for a black tie fundraiser to that end. She also previewed memberships the museum will soon be offering to help offset the costs of archival, and expansion. (An ambitious project will be announced this spring to expand the gallery’s current 7,000 square feet to 28,000 – including an amphitheater for musicians and theater groups and a restaurant.)

Until then, Withers’ images will receive their largest showing since his death (in 2007) during the April 3-7 gathering of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. (Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth #419)

You only have to go as far as Beale Street.

While Rosalind and her team work to raise the funds necessary to properly archive her father’s body of work, the images remain in Withers’ original filing system (offsite). “All of this handwriting is my mother’s and father’s,” Rosalind reflected.

Before you go:The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery (333 Beale Street) is open Wednesdays and Thursdays, 4-10 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 4-11 p.m. and Sundays, 4-9 p.m. (Daytime tours are available for groups of 10 or more by reservation.)
With a short video on the photographer’s life and more than 90 images on display, plan to spend around an hour.

Currently, admission is a suggested donation of $5-10. Beginning March 1, 2013, admission will be $10 for adults and $7 for children with membership packages at various levels.

Note that some of the gallery images are sensitive in nature (read: prepare your children in advance – and be prepared to answer their questions during and after viewing the exhibit).

Charles Moore: Civil Rights and Beyond

Via La Lettre de la Photographie


Charles Moore (1931- 2010) is the most important civil rights era photographer. His searing images of conflict between demonstrators and law enforcement helped propel landmark civil rights legislation.


Moore, the son of a Baptist preacher and car salesman, was born in Hackleburg, Alabama, not far from the birthplace of Helen Keller. In 1958, at 27 years old, as a photographer for the Montgomery Advertiser in Alabama, Moore was on hand to photograph the arrest of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. by two policemen. His photos of the event were distributed nationwide by the Associated Press, and one was published in Life magazine. This photo pushed the regional story into a national debate. It also launched Moore’s long, historic career producing images of the civil rights movement for a nation that would be “shocked and shaken in their conscience” by the images Moore put in their hands.

Over the next seven years, Moore made some of the most significant pictures of the civil rights movement. As a contract photographer for Life magazine, Moore traveled the South to cover the evolving struggle. His photographs helped bring the reality of the situation to the magazine’s huge audience, which at the time comprised over half the adults in the United States.

Some of the major civil rights era events that Moore covered:

the early efforts of Dr. King to desegregate Montgomery, Alabama, 1958-60;

the violent reaction to the enrollment of James Meredith as the first black student at the University of Mississippi, 1962;

the Freedom March from Tennessee to Mississippi, 1963;

the campaign to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, 1963;

voter registration drives in Mississippi, 1963-1964;

Ku Klux Klan activities in North Carolina, 1965;

and the marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, 1965.

Moore also photographed the civil war in the Dominican Republic, political violence in Venezuela and Haiti, and the Vietnam conflict. In 1989, Charles Moore received the Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism. Moore died in March 2010, at age 79, in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Chrysler Museum, Norfolk; the High Museum, Atlanta; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC; The Menil Collection, Houston; and many others.

Recently, the Steven Kasher gallery in New York present the most comprehensive exhibition of photography by Charles Moore ever undertaken by a gallery or museum. The exhibition, Charles Moore: Civil Rights and Beyond, featured approximately 60 prints, mostly vintage, drawn from the photographer’s estate.

APRIL 4, 1968: DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING ASSASSINATED

Joseph Louw:  Dr. Martin Luther King assassination, Memphis,Tenn., April 4, 1968

Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King Jr's Motel Room Hours After He Was Shot, Memphis, Tennessee 1968

Established in 1968 by Coretta Scott King, The King Center is the official, living memorial dedicated to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.