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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.”
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.
Martin Luther King, Jr., giving the ”I Have a Dream” speech. United Press InternationalAt 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.
Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, pursued by the mob outside Little Rock Central High School, September 4, 1957. Pete HarrisMelba 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.”
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.
The Civil Rights Movement
A Photographic History,
1954-1968

By Steven Kasher / Foreword by Myrlie Evers Williams
Size: 9 x 9"
Cloth, 256 pages
150 duotone illustrations
Published 1996
ISBN: 978-0-7892-0123-2
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This evocative book is the first to tell the story of the civil rights movement through the inspiring photographs that recorded, promoted, and protected it.

"The visual images in this collection capture the spirit of the movement in a way that words alone cannot; the photographs are stunning. This book is poignant, uplifting, and inspirational." -- Alvin F. Poussaint, M.D.

With a striking selection of images and a lively, informative text, Steven Kasher captures the danger, drama, and bravery of the civil rights movement. After an introduction explaining the significance of photography to the movement, the text in this important book proceeds from the Montgomery bus boycott through the students, local, and national movements; the big marches; Freedom summer; Malcolm X; and the death of Martin Luther King.

Each chapter begins with a fast-paced narrative of a crucial event in the movement, complemented by a portfolio of the most effective and evocative photographs of the subject. Ranging from the well known to the rare, these images were shot by such photographers as Richard Avedon, Danny Lyon, Charles Moore, Gordon Parks, Dan Weiner, and more than fifty others. Many of the pictures are accompanied by thought-provoking remembrances and analysis by various photographers and participants.

Steven Kasher, who lives in Manhattan, is a photographer, writer, and curator. He organized the traveling exhibiton "Appeal to This Age: Photography of the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968." Myrlie Evers-Williams is past chairwoman of the NAACP and widow of the civil rights activist Medgar Evers.

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