Narrative images: Daddy, I want to be free (1961)

"This photograph captures William Edwin Jones as he pushes his daughter Renee Andrewnetta Jones during a protest march on Main Street in Memphis, Tennessee, in August of 1961. The father and daughter walk past a car full of white policeman who appear to be watching the protest. In a later interview, 8-month-old Renee who grew up to be a pediatrician, recalls that day as passed down by her parents to her. She noted that the protesters on that particular day were all fathers with their daughters. The mothers and the sons were to remain home in case violence broke out, in order to protect at least half of each family." (via)



Ernest Columbus Withers (1922-2007) was a photojournalist who documented the Civil Rights Movement and captured the segregated South. Withers was known for travelling with Martin Luther King, Jr. and for covering the Emmett Till murder trial (via).

“A veteran freelancer for America’s black press, Withers was known as ‘the original civil rights photographer,’ an insider who’d covered it all, from the Emmett Till murder that jump-started the movement in 1955 to the Little Rock school crisis, the integration of Ole Miss and, now, the 1968 sanitation strike that brought King to Memphis and his death.” (via)

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