“A Fire That No Water Could Put Out”: Civil Rights Photography

Charles Moore
American, 1931–2010
Gelatin silver printPurchase with funds from Sherri and Jess Crawford in honor of John Lewis, 2007.252Freedom songs were fundamentally important to the civil rights movement, especially during marches and public demonstrations. These hopeful pieces of music expressed the difficulty of the struggle and the collective yearning for freedom and equality. Charles Moore’s photograph shows a group of civil rights marchers—among them (left to right) James Orange, Bob Mants, John Lewis, Hosea Williams, Andrew Young, and Amelia Boynton—singing before beginning their walk to the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965.

Doris Derby
American, born 1939
Gelatin silver printPurchase with funds from Jeff and Valerie Levy, 2007.188Dr. Doris Derby is an educator, anthropologist, and photojournalist based in Atlanta. She played a pivotal role in community organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and the Adult Literacy Project. It was as a participant in the workshops of Southern Media (a documentary photography and filmmaking group based in Jackson, MS) that Derby learned about photography and cinematography.She used both media to document the lifestyles and social and political concerns of the African American community, especially in Mississippi. Derby’s photographs reflect her interest in the role of women in the civil rights movement. The often unsung and overlooked women in these photographs put their safety and comfort on the line to fight for their families and communities.

Burk Uzzle
American, born 1938
Gelatin silver printPurchase, 2016.112On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot while standing on the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. His assassination sent electric shocks through the United States, as protests in cities across the country broke out in response.The memorial celebrating his life began the following day in Memphis and continued later that week in Atlanta with a private funeral service for over a thousand friends, family, and dignitaries at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King had been a pastor. His funeral then continued with a mass procession through the streets of Atlanta and ended at Morehouse College, Dr. King’s alma mater.The enormous crowds at the events and the range of photographers who documented that day testify to the love and heartbreak many people felt with the loss of this American hero, clergyman, civil rights leader, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Sheila Pree Bright
American, born 1967
Digital gelatin silver printCourtesy of the artistSince 2014, Sheila Pree Bright has been photographing the Black Lives Matter movement, a chapter-based activist group concerned with the unfair and violent treatment of black Americans, particularly in the criminal justice system. Bright has documented the group’s internationally reported protests in her hometown of Atlanta as well as in Selma, AL; Baltimore, MD; and Ferguson, MO.The titles and square format of Bright’s photographs nod to the importance of Instagram and other social media in the contemporary movement for racial justice. Conversely, her black-and-white prints evoke the timelessness of these images and their strong visual and cultural connections to historical photographs of the civil rights movement.

David Alekhuogie
American, born 1986
Archival pigment printPurchase with funds from the Friends of Photography, 2018.12