The Story Of The Birmingham Civil Rights Movement In Photographs

Martin Luther King, Jr., called Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated city in America. In 1963, he and other civil rights leaders believed it was time to change that. With marches and protests throughout the city, civil rights activists hoped the movement would draw national attention. Hundreds of young African Americans joined the cause, marching for equal rights. Angry segregationists reacted, violently. And it would play out in newspapers and on television screens across the country. Through dramatic primary source photographs, author David Aretha explores this crucial struggle of the Civil Rights Movement.

"Explores and analyzes the historical context and significance of the iconic Charles Moore photograph"--Provided by publisher.

This evocative book is among the first to tell the story of the civil rights movement through the inspiring photographs that recorded, promoted, and protected it. With a striking selection of images and a lively, cogent text, Steven Kasher captures the danger, drama, and bravery of the civil rights movement. 150 duotone illustrations.

The history of the civil rights movement is commonly illustrated with well-known photographs from Birmingham, Montgomery, and Selma—leaving the visual story of the movement outside the South remaining to be told. InNorth of Dixie, historian Mark Speltz shines a light past the most iconic photographs of the era to focus on images of everyday activists who fought campaigns against segregation, police brutality, and job discrimination in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and many other cities. With images by photojournalists, artists, and activists, including Bob Adelman Charles Brittin, Diana Davies, Leonard Freed, Gordon Parks, and Art Shay, North of Dixie offers a broader and more complex view of the American civil rights movement than is usually presented by the media.North of Dixie also considers the camera as a tool that served both those in support of the movement and against it. Photographs inspired activists, galvanized public support, and implored local and national politicians to act, but they also provided means of surveillance and repression that were used against movement participants. North of Dixie brings to light numerous lesser-known images and illuminates the story of the civil rights movement in the American North and West.

Martin Luther King, Jr., called Birmingham, Alabama, the most segregated city in America. In 1963, he and other civil rights leaders believed it was time to change that. With marches and protests throughout the city, civil rights activists hoped the movement would draw national attention. Hundreds of young African Americans joined the cause, marching for equal rights. Angry segregationists reacted, violently. And it would play out in newspapers and on television screens across the country. Through dramatic primary source photographs, author David Aretha explores this crucial struggle of the Civil Rights Movement.

The direct action social protest movement of the 1950s and 1960s resulted in sit-ins, marches, and other showdowns with armed police officers and National Guardsmen. Trained in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s methods of nonviolence, young black men and women took to the streets to fight for their civil rights and sparked a social revolution. Thousands of acts of courage were undertaken in the pursuit of freedom--acts that were often photographed, leaving behind a disquieting visual record of this violent and tumultuous period in American history. Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956-1968 is the most significant exhibition of civil rights photographs presented in an art museum in more than twenty years. These images were taken by many photographers-photojournalists, artists, movement photographers, and amateurs alike-all of whom seem to have had a keen understanding of the significance of their subject. This publication presents a narrative of some of the key moments of the civil rights movement, including the Freedom Rides of 1961, the Birmingham hosings of 1963, and the Selma to Montgomery March of 1965. These are the unforgettable images that helped to change the nation, increasing the momentum of the nonviolent movement by dramatically raising awareness of injustice and the struggle for equality.

"The best-known images of the civil rights struggle show black Americans as nonthreatening victims of white aggression. Though this imagery helped garner the sympathy of liberal whites in the North for the plight of blacks, it did so by preserving a picture of whites as powerful and blacks as hapless victims. Freedom Now! showcases photographs rarely seen in the mainstream media, which depict the power wielded by black men, women and children in remaking U.S. society through their activism."--Art, Design & Architecture Museum website.

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 1,7, University of Paderborn, language: English, abstract: The African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s can be seen as one of the major events in America’s history that fundamentally changed its entire society. In one of the most liberal countries in the world that defeated fascism and fought against communism, people of different ethnicity were still treated differently. While white people enjoyed all the rights, black people were excluded from public places, did not have the right to vote and were punished more severely than their fellow citizens. But the African American population stood up against these kinds of suppression and segregation in the middle of the 20th century and fought for their rights, especially with the help of their leading figures such as Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Malcolm X. Even if they could eventually achieve some of their goals such as the abolition of segregated buses or the right to vote, their peaceful movement was most of the times violently stopped by policemen and white civilians. Due to this unequal fight, the blacks’ demands and sufferings captured more and more the media’s attention and were documented especially through photography. This photography had a high impact on how the Civil Rights Movement was perceived all over the country and, as a consequence, indirectly helped the protestors in their plans. Interestingly enough, it is remarkable that nearly all these printed photographs show the Movement in a way that was unknown to people so that special emotions towards black people and the own behaviors were evoked: empathy and guilt. This then led to a new debate about racial discrimination and civil rights. In this term paper I will therefore examine in more detail in which way photojournalism supported the African American Civil Rights Movement. I will start by giving a short overview of photojournalism and its effects on society. Then, I will continue by analyzing different types of photographs of the Civil Rights Movement that evoke feelings of empathy and guilt. For this purpose I will describe one exemplary photograph for each category and explain how influenced society. Finally, a conclusion with possibilities to expand the topic will follow.