The prominent figures of the Civil Rights Movement, W.E.B.

DuBois, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. (1955-1965)

Washington March

Jesse Jackson, present day leader who has fought for civil rights throughout his life

Excerpt from: The Civil Rights Movement Foreword By Myrlie Evers Williams (Medgar Evers widow) My husband lay dying in a pool of blood on the doorstep of our home in Jackson, Mississippi. His body had been toppled by a cowardly assassins bullet and left for the world--and his children--to see. I can still see Medgars handsome features distorted in excruciating pain as he succumbed to deaths premature call. It is this distinct memory of his final hours during that June day in 1963 that has haunted me as I have looked back over this books often scathing yet also inspiring images. I dont remember the details of his funeral. That widely publicized photo of a tearstained young woman mourning the death of her first love could not have been me. I was too inexperienced to have been a widow. And my husband was too peace-loving to have been a casualty of war. Just days before Medgars death, he had remarked to a reporter: "If I die, it will be in a good cause. Ive been fighting for America just as much as soldiers in Vietnam." I wonder about the images that my husband must have carried within him on his quest for equality. How emotionally draining it must have been on his spirit to bear in mind the unrecognizable portrait of the battered Emmett Till as Medgar pursued justice to

bring the young boys murderers to trial. Nothing could have shielded Medgars eyes from the deplorable conditions of the Mississippi sharecroppers or from the "strange fruit" hung on trees by brutal barbarians. When the struggle for freedom began in the late 1950s, the individuals participating in the civil rights movement could not possibly have foreseen that protesting in support of basic human dignity would culminate in one of the most heartrending civil wars of American history. The stories and the photographs seen in this book testify to the shameful conditions endured by black Americans during a period when democracy was being promoted and fought for on the international front. Most blacks in America lived without even the limited liberties afforded citizens of third-world countries. The faces that stare at you from the pages that follow are marked with the determination of individuals who were prepared to die for their own right to be free. While some of the faces in these photographs reflect the scars and weary tears of battle fatigue, there are also visions of hope mirrored in the eyes of the warriors. A picture of the Little Rock Nine studying in quiet determination pending their admittance into the towns previously segregated high school offers evidence that we were moving in the right direction. Just three years before, the victorious 1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education had struck down segregation in the nations public schools, and it has also been applied to promoting equality in all aspects of American society. And who can forget the moving, spirited challenge of Fannie Lou Hamers emotional testimony, when she moved the hearts of all those who heard her during the 1964 Democratic Convention. These are but two of the proud images to be seen in this work. Every battle has its public and its private moments of defeat and victory. Every historical moment is made up of a multitude of personal experiences. Those battles and those experiences within the civil rights movement have been prolifically documented in written histories, but the camera has captured them with even greater force. For those of us who lived through these events, nothing brings them to mind more vividly than the extremely moving photographs seen here. They also serve to educate generations who were not alive during this provocative stage in our history. A young woman recently commented to me that she "hears so many speak about that period of time. It helps to hear the story, but we want--and need--more. Photos help because we can touch them and try to feel what it was like to live during that time." As we search for answers to help us solve the pressing issues in this country, books such as this one will play a major part. Not only does it take us back to a period when events originated that would shape the American scene for years to come, but it also reinforces the need to address civil rights issues into the twenty-first century. I find it difficult to look at these photographs without flinching from the memories and

from the anger they invoke. But I must look. I must remember, as you must. For this was history in the making. Like it or not, you cannot hide from the cameras eye.

Emmett Till Before and After His Murder

Emmett Till was a fourteen-year-old black schoolboy visiting relatives near the hamlet called Money in the Mississippi Delta. Because he had prankishly flirted with a white shopkeeper, he was brutally beaten and shot. Several days later his corpse was found in the Tallahatchie River, with a gin-mill fan barbwired around his neck. The boys mother, Mamie Bradley, insisted that his body be shipped back home to Chicago, where it was displayed in an open coffin for four days. At least a hundred thousand members of the black community stood in line for hours to view the body. The leading black periodicals, including Jet and the Chicago Defender, juxtaposed earlier photographs of the bright-eyed youngster in shirt and tie with the horrific picture of his bashed and bloated face. The story of the huge outpouring of sympathy--and the lynching behind it--was picked up by the white press as well.

Martin Luther King, Jr., giving the "I Have a Dream" speech. United Press International At the end of a long procession of speech and song, Martin Luther King, Jr., stepped up to the podium to deliver the closing address. Part of it had been written during the preceding hurried hours, parts of it rehearsed many times. With its final crescendo improvised in response to the crowd, "I Have a Dream" became instantly famous and remains one of the great moments of modern oratory.

Danella Bryant praying during a demonstration outside the traffic engineering building, Birmingham, May 5, 1963. Gary Haynes. Danella Bryant was a seventeen-year-old Parker High School senior active in the movement: "I was really, really involved. And the reason I could be involved, unlike some of my peers, was that my father owned his own business. He wasnt easily intimidated... I didnt realize at the time how dangerous the situation was. The only thing I was concerned with was that I wanted my freedom, I wanted to be able to go where I wanted, like everybody else did... I couldnt understand why everybody didnt leave

[school to demonstrate]. But as I look back now, I realize that they were really afraid. Their parents had jobs and they were afraid that they would lose their jobs, and they were afraid, especially the seniors, that they wouldnt graduate. In fact, I thought maybe I wouldnt graduate, but I did... A few teachers--I said they were Uncle Toms at the time--they were afraid and felt like we shouldnt be doing what we were doing, that things would happen in time. And I told them that we ought to speed those things up, we got to let the whole world know whats happening in Birmingham... The world needed to know. The world did know."

Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, pursued by the mob outside Little Rock Central High School, September 4, 1957. Pete Harris Melba Patillo Beals, another of the Little Rock Nine, has written: "In the Sunday paper, I saw a pitiful closeup of Elizabeth, walking alone in front of Central on the first day of integration. It pained my insides to see, once again, the twisted scowling faces with open mouths jeering, clustered around my friends head like bouquets of grotesque flowers. It was an ad paid for by a white man from a small town in Arkansas. "If you live in Arkansas," the ad read, "study this picture and know shame. When hate is unleashed and bigotry finds a voice, God help us all." "I felt a kind of joy and hope in the thought that one white man was willing to use his own money to call attention to the injustice we were facing. Maybe the picture would help others realize that what they were doing was hurting everybody."

Linda Brown and her Sister Walking to School, Topeka, Kansas, March 1953. Carl Iwaski. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court ruled on Oliver Brown et al. v. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas and ended legal public-school segregation in the United States. This case was named for the fourth-grader Linda Brown--seen here at age ten, with her sister Terry Lynn, age six. Under segregation laws they were not allowed to attend the nearby New Summer School but had to walk six blocks through the dangerous Rock Island Switchyard in order to catch a bus to all-black Monroe School.

Demonstrators Blasted Against a Doorway, Seventeenth Street, May 3, 1963. Charles Moore. On May 3 Moore broke off from another assignment when radio reports out of Birmingham alerted him to the intensity of the events there. His pictures of the dog and water-cannon attacks were taken as soon as he arrived in town. They were published in the May 17 issue of Life, in an eleven-page lead story that ran under Moores byline. While he was photographing, Moore was hit by a concrete block thrown from a roof, which damaged the tendons in his ankle. Limping painfully, he stayed on the job for several days,

until he was arrested on May 7. After jumping bail the next day, he was forbidden to reenter Alabama, where he and his family resided, until the charges were eventually resolved.