Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Struggle
History has sanded off the movement's rough edges. A new book rights the balance with images of African Americans fighting hard for freedom.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
Photographs of the Civil Right movement have, for several reasons, been curated down to a handful of familiar images that tell a tidy story: Peaceful, passive African Americans were set upon, harassed, beaten, and jailed by vicious white bigots, an alarming number of them in police uniforms. But history is never that neat, never so simple, as Martin A. Berger reminds us so forcefully in Freedom Now! Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Struggle. The photographs shown here depict African Americans behaving more forcefully, fighting back, organizing, protesting, and doing what they can to wrench the freedom to which they were entitled from the white hands that withheld it. The people shown here are not saints. They are not even always heroes. But we will never know the fullness of their story unless we include these images into the accepted narrative.
Woman resisting arrest
Birmingham, Alabama, April 14, 1963
Unidentified photographer
All photographs from Freedom Now! Forgotten Photographs of the Civil Rights Struggle by Martin A. Berger, 192 pp., University of California Press, $49.95.
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty
High School picketer
Houston, Texas, May 10, 1965
Unidentified photographer
AP
Dion Diamond, a student at Howard University is surrounded by white youths during a sit-in demonstration
Arlington, Virginia, June 9, 1960
Unidentified photographer
AP
Lunch counter protest
Raleigh, North Carolina, February 10, 1960
Unidentified photographer
Bettmann/Corbis
Deputies approach child demonstrator in front of the Dallas County courthouse
Selma, Alabama, July 8, 1964
Photography by Matt Herron
(c) Matt Herron
Fire bomb watch
Mileston, Mississippi, June 1, 1964
Photography by Matt Herron
(c) Matt Herron
Woman boycotting Montgomery buses
Montgomery, Alabama, December 1, 1955
Photograph by Don Cravens
Don Cravens/Time Life Pictures/Getty
Man with knife attempting to stab police dog
Birmingham, Alabama, May 3, 1963
Photograph by Bill Hudson
Bill Hudson/AP/Wide World Photos
Black citizens filling out voter-registration forms at Forest City Courthouse
Hattiesburg, Mississippi, January 22, 1964
Photograph by Matt Herron
(c) Matt Herron
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