Art, Photography, And Civil Rights
This collection of photographs of the Civil Rights Movement had its provenance in France. From October 2018 to January 2019, the Pavillon Populaire, a museum of art photography in the City of Montpellier, hosted an exhibition, "I Am a Man: Photographs of the Struggle for Civil Rights in the South of the United States, 1960 -- 1970". A French book to accompany the exhibition, "I Am a Man" was published in 2018.
Following the exhibition in France, the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, Jacksonville, exhibited "I Am a Man" from January 30 -- August 21, 2021. A travelling version of the exhibition is now in process sponsored by the Mid-America Arts Alliance. This new book, "I Am a Man: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1960- 1970" (2021) was prepared to accompany the American exhibition. William Ferris curated both the French and American exhibitions and prepared both the French and English acompanying books. Ferris has published widely on the American South. He is a former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the senior associate director emeritus of its Center for the Study of the American South. The Center for the Study of the American South helped sponsor this book, published by the University Press of Mississippi. The title of the book and exhibition "I am a Man" is derived from the placards of protesters during the 1968 Sanitation Workers Strike in Memphis, Tennessee. This strike in Memphis and the attendant assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. feature prominently in the book.
This book shows the artistic and documentary power of photography. It is not a full history of the Civil Rights Moment. Rather the book encourages reflection and thought on the Movement just as would a leisurely promenade through the exhibition space of these photographs. The book shows photographs from several crucial events during the decade of the 1960s, from sit-ins at lunch counters through the Freedom Riders to James Meredith integrating the University of Mississippi in 1962. A section of the book explores the iconic 1963 March on Washington, followed by extensive photographs of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina. Selma, Alabama's "Bloody Sunday" is shown in photos as is James Meridith's 1966 March Against Fear. There are three chapters covering inter-related events in 1968, including the Poor People's March, and the Sanitation Workers Strike and assassination of Dr King in Memphis, as mentioned earlier. The final group of photos shows the aftermath of the 1970 police killings of Phillip Lafeyette Gibbs and James Earl Green on the campus of Jackson State University. Brief introductory texts and annotations accompany the photographs.
Biographies of each of the twelve photographers presented in the book and a discussion of the source of each photograph are included at the end of the volume.
I was moved to see these photographs, as I remembered the times of the 1960s. They brought back the people and places of the era together with the surrounding towns and cities of the South. It somehow felt both immediate and far away. "I am a Man" is a beautiful coffee-table sized book which encourages meditation on America, the Civil Rights Movement, and on the power of photography as an artistic medium.
Robin Friedman
