When it comes to the civil-rights movement, many assume that a majority of discrimination and police brutality toward black people occurred in the South, considering the stream of imagery from Alabama flashpoints in Selma or Montgomery. However, a new compilation of never-before-seen and iconic photography by author Mark Speltz emphasizes that the same brutal treatment was inherent in states north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The imagery in his book, North of Dixie: Civil Rights Photography Beyond the South (available in November), captures the essence of the violent climate toward grassroots activists and civilians alike who participated in peaceful protests.
Here, activists picketing at a demonstration for housing equality while uniformed American Nazi Party members counterprotest in the background, with signs displaying anti-integration slogans and racial epithets.
Charles Brittin/Getty Research Institute
Members of a mob shouting obscenities, threatening a young black family as they moved into an all-white development outside Philadelphia just two days after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The family spent its first night in the cellar and, after two years of relentless attacks, moved out of the neighborhood.
Library of Congress
Flag flying outside the offices of the NAACP on Fifth Avenue, announcing that another lynching had taken place in America.
Library of Congress
Members of the St. Louis branch of the NAACP calling for victory at home and abroad and an end to racial violence.
Library of Congress
San Francisco NAACP members during a “Don’t Ride” campaign, urging riders to boycott Yellow Cab and help stop hiring discrimination.
Library of Congress
View of an expanse of jail cells. Prisons, which tended to be overwhelmingly populated by black prisoners, became important sites of protest and organizing during the civil rights and Black Power eras.
Leonard Freed/J. Paul Getty Museum
Boy picketing outside a local school, one of the many children who would play a critical role during the civil-rights era to advance the struggle for racial justice.
Bob Adelman/J. Paul Getty Museum
Reporters interviewing activists with the Congress of Racial Equality, who were waging a sit-in and hunger strike outside the Los Angeles Board of Education offices to raise awareness of segregation and inequality in the public schools.
Charles Brittin/Getty Research Institute.
Demonstrators sitting with signs and intentionally blocking traffic during protest on a car-lined thoroughfare.
Leonard Freed/The J. Paul Getty Museum/Magnum Photos
Protesters being physically removed during a demonstration against the shocking violence in Selma in March 1965. No clouds of tear gas or swinging clubs are present in these scenes outside the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, but Charles Brittin’s tight focus immediately draws viewers into one of the most dramatic struggles he documented for CORE.
Charles Brittin/Getty Research Institute.
A female protester from the Brittin series in Los Angeles.
The same protester, legs restrained.
Another CORE activist wrested from the Los Angeles demonstration, in a dramatic first of three.
Charles Brittin/Getty Research Institute
Second of three.
Third of three.
Armed members of the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party standing on the state capitol steps protesting a proposed law limiting the ability to carry firearms in a “manner manifesting an intent to intimidate others.”
Washington State Archives
A young woman raises her fist in a show of pride and determination during an open-housing march through the streets of Chicago.
Declan Haun/Chicago History Museum
