We Shall Overcome:Civil Rights Photography

Brittany Gerow

We Shall Overcome: Civil Rights Photography

In the late 1950’s, photojournalists became an inherentpart of the Civil Rights movement. Although the Associated Press for companies like the Washington Post and Life magazine often commissioned them, photographers like CharlesMoore, Matt Herron, and Bob Adelman visually exposed the racial disenfranchisement being supported by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and various other organizations. Their photos captured moments of terror and violence inflicted upon and by protestors. By bringing southern brutalities to light (Raiford 35) the images taken provide a tangible reflection of the movement. Circulated and curated images from demonstrations like this capture theimportance of documenting social injustice. Furthermore, thedocumentary capacity of image-based narratives contributes to our understanding of prejudice in America.

Marching from Selma to Montgomery, African Americans ofall ages stormed with pride to defend their right to vote inAlabama. The year is 1965, and the Civil Rights movement hasreached its tensest point in southern America. Journalism and its approach to the documentation of the violence and terror, acts as a connecting force to lift the fog of prejudice in the South. The March of Selma (Fig. 1) is one of the most memorable moments of the Peoples’ movement, and produced many of the iconic photos we see today.

Moore’s most famous images lined the pages of Life for over a decade. In September 1958, the Associated Press picked up his photograph of Martin Luther King being arrested in Montgomery (Fig. 2). King is forcibly pushed andhandcuffed inside a police station where he awaiting his friend, Ralph Abernathy. The iconic power of this image

illustrates how a movement photographer’s position behind the lens was necessary.

Under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Moore’s photos brought about national attention that heeded the official change in legislation. Kennedy’s response to the Birmingham Campaign in 1963 was a denouncement of African American’s fight against symbolic sites of exclusion (Trodd 25). The visual representation of blacks fighting for desegregation created an entire discourse on the national scale that challenged their discrimination and desire for equal rights in society.

Trodd further explains that the rhetoric of a photographer’s work in this era, records an otherwise unremembered trauma (Trodd 26). As African Americans battledfor space in everyday life (like riding at the front of the bus in Montgomery), they battled for a more symbolic sense of space.

Photographs like VOTE by Matt Herron display this rhetoric (Fig.3). The young Bobby Simmons, who marched in the Selma to Montgomery demonstration, declares a whiteface with the word VOTE on his forehead. The dissemination of this image reflects a prejudice that blacks did not have an equal say in politics, even though they were American citizens.

Trodd, like Susan Sontag, describes photography as “an imaginary possession of the past” (Sontag 9) - both psychological and physical. Herron’s portrait of Bobby Simmons (because it was in Life magazine) achieved national status that contributes to our understanding of the African American’s life, but also to the essence of democracy and what it means to question race.

In addition to Simmons’ portrait, another photo series that has achieved celebrity status are the candid images of Fannie Lou Hamer (Fig. 4). Hamer was a constant activist forblack civil rights in America. She, as an emblem of equal rights for black women and white disenfranchisement, is represented in photographs as a proponent for change. Herron’s portrait of Hamer at the Freedom Summer demonstrations in 1964 shows her singing inspirational

gospels to protestors. She stands on the steps of Forest County courthouse, holding a sign proclaiming that: “freedomis now”. This image of a black woman promoting the democratic right to vote also inspires further involvement (Speltz 811) in a non-violent way for young Americans.

Hamer’s striking appearance and fervor in demonstrations is both symbolic and intimate. Dissemination of photography like this, frees it from its dependence upon context (Benjamin 10). The focus of one particular moment in history behind a lens expands our knowledge of it (Benjamin 12); this is why photographs of Hamer can stand inplace for the masses. They are inherently important when representing a cause that challenges a collective, ignorant ideology.

The aesthetic of civil rights photography is consistentthroughout the era. The pastiche of street photography is engrained with the overall look of the Civil Rights visual style. As we recognize the rage, terror, grief and exhilaration in the content, the function becomes subliminalas well as overt (Abel 37). By achieving an emotional response from images displayed, the sit-ins or protestors can be related to more artistic Bresson-type photography.

There are many similarities to the most famous images of the Civil Rights movement, to that of the celebrity Henri-Cartier Bresson. Both done in short, single-lens cameras, photographers like Herron and Moore achieve a similar type of image. Arguably, if the political content ofthe Civil Rights images are ignored, they are beautiful images in themselves.

By considering the pastiche established by artists likeBresson in the 40’s and the representations of black Americans in the media, scenes of protests were often not obscured by photographers. That is, they were unobtrusive inthe acts of the people involved. Can a photojournalist also be an artist, or are they responsible to help when witnessing acts of violence? Photographs of demonstrations do wear witness to violence and are translated back to us through the media, but can also gain traction from their skillful execution.

This “luminous glare” (Raiford 3) captures the essence of an entire movement that challenged pre-existing social and economic regime of power. The vivid images playing back onto us (magazine and television audiences) display a naked truth that goes far beyond just a simple broadcast of events(Raiford 2). Such huge spectacles like the March of Selma orthe protests in Birmingham achieve a level of truth because the violence goes completely against a white-dominated society.

Photographers like Bob Adelman used the national stage that the Civil Rights movement had to send a specific message to viewers. Because he was a notable photographer, not just photojournalist, his work captures very intimate portraits of the most famous leaders. Simple gestures of King’s hand raised (Fig. 5), and white Americans with black Americans singing the token peace song We Shall Overcome (Fig. 6), show the core message of the “movement” without any depiction of violence.

Adelman’s ability to portray the human condition by removing the spectacle of violence from his images, illustrates the beauty of masses coming together for the greater good. King’s hand raised in leading the people during his “I Have a Dream” speech encapsulates one of the most pivotal moments in American history. It seems as thoughKing is addressing an entire nation, even the world, in a single image that stands for “the peoples’” cause.

The notion that photography can expose the human condition is a customary way of understanding its place in society. The Civil Rights movement in America and its ability to upheave an entire democracy’s ideologies finds its core popularity in image-based narratives. Photojournalism becomes both an art form disseminated in themedia, as well a mirror into social change. On the global scale, we can look to Moore, Herron, and Adelman as activists themselves. For many, especially in the Midwest/North, visual representations of white on black violence were not a common discourse. The suffering and martyrdom affected an entire nation’s knowledge of racial discrimination, which photography distilled into a timeless

representation of the masses’ power to change elitist ideologies.

Abel, Elizabeth. “Skin, Flesh, and the Affective Wrinkles of Civil Rights Photography.” Qui Parle: Critical Humanities and Social Sciences 20:2 (2012).

Raiford, Leigh. “Come Let Us Build a New World Together.” American Quarterly: Imprisoned in a Luminous Glare. (2009): 1-20.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York Anchor Books, 1990. Print.

Speltz, Mark. “Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement” Journal of American History Dec. (2009): 808-811.

Trodd, Zoe. “A Negative Utopia: Protest Memory and the Spatio-Symbolism of Civil Rights Literature and Photography.” African American Review 42.1 (2008): 36-59.

Walter, Benjamin. “The Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction.” Illuminations: Second Writings, 1961. Print.

Fig.1. Matt Herron, The March from Selma to Montgomery, 1965.

Fig. 2. Charles Moore, Martin Luther King Jr.is Arrested for Loitering Outside a

Courtroom, 1958.

Fig. 3. Matt Herron, VOTE, 1965

Fig. 4. Matt Herron, Freedom Day in Mississippi, 1964.

Fig. 5. Bob Adelman, March on Washington, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Speech ‘I Have a Dream’, 1963.

Fig. 6. Bob Adelman, Sit-In: We Shall Overcome, 1963.