The Afrapix Collective

Afrapix was founded in South Africa in 1982 (and disbanded in 1991), a collective of photographers who documented and opposed Apartheid. According to Paul Weinberg, a cofounder, initially, there were two objectives: to found a cooperative not unlike Magnum Photos but also - or primarily - to stimulate social documentary photography and social change.

(...) the Afrapix photographers’ mandate was to be participants in action, aligned with the politics and principles of the anti-apartheid movement. Their work was grounded in the belief that exposure and visibility were not the end goal; rather, the objective was ‘preconditions for an empathetic and humanistic reaction that would prompt international political action.’ (via)

The more influential Afrapix became, the more challenges the photographers had to face. Apartheid security forces harrassed the photographers, their office was raided, then the building (which also housed other anti-apartheid groups) was bombed. There were police surveillance, spies, and direct threats. Laws became more restrictive, designed to fight "the public relations nightmare the apartheid government was experiencing overseas, namely, images of white police officers brutalising unarmed black civilians". The mainstream press avoided running stories that seemed to be opposing the government policy and censored itself to survive since their revenue came from the white readership that was already complaining about boring and annoying headlines "about the experiences of Black South Africans". These experiences were not appealing to advertisers, either (via).

- - - - - - - - - - -

photograph (COSATU Cultural Day 1987, (c) Anna Zieminski) via

Trabold, Bryan. 2018. Rhetorics of Resistance: Opposition Journalism in Apartheid South Africa. 23. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh.

Trabold, Bryan. 2018. Rhetorics of Resistance: Opposition Journalism in Apartheid South Africa. 43. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh.

Trabold, Bryan. 2018. Rhetorics of Resistance: Opposition Journalism in Apartheid South Africa. 43. University of Pittsburgh Press: Pittsburgh.

Narrative images: Trolley

"One of the most important photographs in “The Americans,” one of the most celebrated ones, is this one of the trolleys in New Orleans. It was a picture that Frank made in the fall of 1955, just a few weeks before Rosa Parks in nearby Montgomery, Alabama, had refused to give up her seat on a bus.

As you can see, it shows a trolley, and we see in the front of the trolley, two older white people, two children in the middle of the trolley. The boy looking out, I think, with an almost quizzical expression, as if to ask the photographer and then also us, the viewer, “What is this world? What is going on?”

In the back of the trolley is this African American man, who looks out with an almost plaintive expression, questioning expression, about why the world is perhaps this way. You can see here the rigidly segregated society that existed in New Orleans at that time.

One of the really interesting facets about the picture is those who are old enough to remember segregated buses, particularly perhaps those in the South, in New Orleans, might notice that the little girl has her hand resting not actually on the back of the seat itself, but a little bit higher than the seat. And it turns out that her hand is resting on a piece of wood that indicated the “colored section” of the bus. And that piece of wood could be picked up and moved backwards if there were no more seats for white people on the bus. So, if you get on this bus at that time, and there was no seat for a white person you could pick that up move it to the next row of seats and all of the African Americans would have to get up and move one seat back on one road.

It’s a really, I think, chilling expression of racism in this country at that time.

(...) it still speaks about issues that we’re dealing with today in contemporary society, the racism that exists within America, and also (...) it’s such a poignant and powerful picture."

Sarah Greenough

- - - - - - - - -
photograph by Robert Frank (New Orleans, 1955) via

Detroit's Segregation Wall

In 1941, a white real estate developer built the so-called Eight Mile Wall (almost 13 km) in Detroit to secure financing for their white customers by segregating Black and white neighbourhoods. The east side was the Black side, the west side the white side.



This act of segregation had an impact on generations of people living in Detroit.

The side of the wall these residents called home would later affect the sale price of their houses, the value of their next homes, and, eventually, the wealth they might inherit from their parents. Their experience in elementary school would determine the classes they took in high school, their decisions about college or the military, and the ease with which they achieved their goals. And throughout their lives, the friendships they made would frame their interactions with classmates and colleagues, with doctors and law enforcement, in social settings and in job interviews. (via)

In the 1930s, this area had been a remote one (the city had not yet extended sewer lines there) attracting Black families who wanted to get away from other neighbourhoods and build their own small houses there. Then, in the early 1940s, a white developer discovered the area and wanted to create a neighbourhood for white people. What he needed was the Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) to agree, however, the administration did not. It refused to back mortgages since the area was too close to the Black neighbourhood increasing "the homeowners' risk of default". The developer found a solution, i.e., building a wall that separates the two neighbourhoods and by doing so sending a very clear message. And, in fact, after the wall was built, the FHA agreed to back mortgages in the white zone which again led to an influx of white people in this area. Decades ago, nearly all white residents left for the suburbs (via and via).

- - - - - - - -
photograph via

Narrative images: Window Shopping, Granada, 1930s

"An African American woman, dressed in her Saturday go-to-town-best, stands outside a store window, chin in hand, contemplating the contents in the window. The image is reflective and thoughtful. What is she thinking? And what lies beyond the frame of this photograph? In Mississippi in the 1930s, could she walk into this store, perhaps try on clothes or hats, and make a purchase? If she were welcomed in this store, would she have the means to buy the merchandise? The woman is separated from the contents of the store window by the large plate glass of segregation.

As in most of her photographs, Welty captures an artistic moment in this image, but the reality of the world outside the frame of the photograph is always present. In this instance, Welty raises questions about this woman as a consumer. How is her ability to buy a mark of freedom conveying access to the American dream? Grace Elizabeth Hale states in her book Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 that shopping and segregation were uneasily intertwined. Department stores, like railroad cars and movie theaters, were “muddled middle” spaces where segregation remained vulnerable, “neither public nor private, neither black nor white” (9). It was in these “muddled middle” spaces that middle class African Americans chose to shop. While whites and blacks might be separated in schools, churches, restaurants, and other spaces, the ritual of Saturday shopping “belonged to all southerners” (Hale 182). Welty captures this “muddled middle” of a Mississippi small town on Saturday in the group of white men just down the street from the African American woman gazing in the shop window."

Mae Claxton

- - - - - - - - -
photograph by Eudora Alice Welty, 1909-2001, (c) by Eudora Welty Foundation) via

The Child Opportunity Index

The Child Opportunity Index (COI) was developed in 2014 to measure and map "the quality of resources and conditions that matter for children to develop in a healthy way" in the neighbourhoods they grow up, and to spark conversations about inequality and encourage actions to increase equity. In 2020, COI 2.0 was launched including updated data (via) from 29 neighbourhood-level indicators covering three domains: education (quality and access to early childhood education, social resources related to educational achievement), health and environment (access to healthy food and green space, pollution from industry, exposure to extreme heat), social and economic domain.

Good schools, parks, playgrounds, healthy food, clean air, safe housing, health care are some aspects crucial for children to become healthy adults. In the United States, many children live in these "high opportunity" neighbourhoods that provide access to the conditions mentioned before. Many, however, live in "low opportunity" neighbourhoods, many of these "many" being Black, Hispanic and Native American children (via).

For example, (...) in the Milwaukee metro the typical White child enjoys a neighborhood with a Child Opportunity Score of 85, while the typical Black child lives in a neighborhood with a score of only 6. As another point of comparison, this racial gap in Milwaukee represents about four opportunity levels (the maximum possible): the typical Black child lives in a very low-opportunity neighborhood, while the typical White child lives in a very high-opportunity neighborhood. (via)

As of 2017...

While only 9 percent of white children live in the 20 percent of neighborhoods ranked as lowest in opportunity, 32 percent of Hispanic and 40 percent of black children live in such neighborhoods. These disparities remain after controlling for children’s own poverty status. Looking just at poor children, 22 percent of white children live in the 20 percent of neighborhoods ranked as lowest in opportunity, but 45 percent of Hispanic and 57 percent of black children live in such neighborhoods (...). As in our analysis of neighborhoods by poverty status, we find that racial/ethnic inequities in neighborhood opportunities for children are larger in metro areas with higher levels of segregation. (McArdle & Acevedo-Garcia, 2017:5)

Summing up... 

Segregation is not benign. The neighborhoods where children live and grow are both separate and greatly unequal along racial/ethnic lines in ways that have profound impacts on opportunities for healthy child development and wellbeing. The differences in neighborhood characteristics and opportunities between racial/ethnic groups are dramatic not just on average, but for large majorities of their populations. (McArdle & Acevedo-Garcia, 2017:4)

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- McArdle, N. & Acevedo-Garcia, D. (2017). Consequences of Segregation for Children's Opportunity and Wellbeing; via
- photograph by Gordon Parks (Alabama, 1956) via and via

David Goldblatt (II): Particulars

In 1975, David Goldblatt discovered his fascination for details of people's bodies and for six months continued to pphotograph these very details - placement of hands, ears, arrangement of limbs. It was the body language he wanted to capture, the clothing, the decoration with which we often declare our values, he said (via).

‘There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’” As I study the faces, the familiar landmarks and everyday scenes, I search for their meaning, trying, like Goldblatt, to understand. The series Particulars, where Goldblatt captures close-ups of a subject’s hands, their knees, their ears, stands out for me. As I look at them, I imagine him asking: “Where in the body does hate live? Where does love live?”

Susan Sontag

“I was always struck by the need to make photographs that were somehow relevant to our society, to our situation in dealing with apartheid and the opposition to it. But I wanted somehow to be free just to photograph the things that I found beautiful.”

David Goldblatt

photographs via and via and via and via

David Goldblatt (I): "I am not an activist. I very seldom take an active stand on something."

“I’ve always said quite explicitly that I can never deny my complicity in the South African scene during apartheid because to draw breath here—just to draw breath—you became complicit. There was no aspect of life in South Africa that was not pervasively penetrated by apartheid. No life, and no aspect of life.”

David Goldblatt (photographer, 1930-2018)

“I was asking myself how it was possible to be so apparently normal, moral, upright – which almost all those citizens were – in such an appallingly abnormal, immoral, bizarre situation. I hoped we would see ourselves revealed by a mirror held up to ourselves.”

David Goldblatt

“During those years, colour seemed too sweet a medium to express the anger, disgust and fear that apartheid inspired.”

David Goldblatt

photographs by David Goldblatt via and via and via and via and via

The Actors School, Martin Luther King, and Julia Roberts' Birth

Julia Roberts was born in 1967, a time defined - among other things - by segregation and racist violence. Her parents had founded the Atlanta Actors and Writers Workshop in Georgia and saw "their fair share of hatred for welcoming black children into their acting school", one of them being Yolanda King (via).

“My parents had a theater school in Atlanta called the Actors and Writers Workshop. And one day, Coretta Scott King called my mother and asked if her kids could be part of the school because they were having a hard time finding a place that would accept her kids. And my mom was like, ‘Sure, come on over.’ And so they all became friends and they helped us out of a jam.”
Julia Roberts

... the jam being paying the expenses for her birth. Martin Luther King, Jr. und Coretta Scott King paid for her parents' hospital bill after Roberts was born since her parents, Betty Lou Bredemus and Walter Grady Roberts, could not afford to do so (via).

When, in 1965, Yolanda King was cast as the romantic interest of a person played by a white actor, a racist blew up a car outside of the theatre during the production, then went inside to throw things onstage at the actors (via).

Yeah, because in the ’60s, you didn’t have little Black children interacting with little white kids in acting school. And Julia’s parents were welcoming, and I think that’s extraordinary, and it sort of lays the groundwork for who you are.
Gayle King

- - - - - - -
photograph by Bernie Kleina (1966) via

Arthur Robert Ashe, Jr. (1943-1993)

Arthur Ashe started playing tennis when he was six years old on a segregated playground adjacent to his home in Virginia. In 1958, he became the first black US-American to play in the Maryland boys' championships which was also his first integrated tennis competition. Later, he became the first black tennis player selected to the United Statis Davis Cup team and the first and only black man to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the Australian Open, and the US Open (via and via).

"In actuality, Arthur Ashe was a trailblazer for African American males in tennis every time he succeeded on the court, in much the same fashion as Althea Gibson had for African American females some 10 years earlier. The relevance of these accomplishments was not lost on Ashe. His determination to succeed despite being an outcast in a historically white sport was put to an even greater test in 1969. 

In a year (1969), when he was basking in the international fame, he had gained the previous year after winning the US Open and playing a key role on the United States winning Davis Cup team, two separate issues came to the forefront and helped shape Arthur the activist, a role he never ran from throughout his life if he believed in the cause. At a time when tennis’ popularity was growing by leaps and bounds, the amount of prize money being offered to the players, the “drawing cards,” was lagging disproportionately behind. Ashe and several other players formed in 1969, what later became known as the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals). It is from this small and visionary beginning that today’s top players enjoy the large sums of prize money for which they compete. Later that year, as the #1-ranked American and one of the best players in the world, Arthur applied for a visa to play in the South African Open, a prestigious event. His visa was denied because of the color of his skin. Though Arthur was well aware that this would probably be the case, he decided to take a bold stand. His call for expulsion from South Africa from the tennis tour and Davis Cup play was quickly supported by numerous prominent individuals and organizations, both in and out of the tennis world. In effect, he raised the world’s awareness to the oppressive form of government (apartheid) of South Africa. Buoyed by Arthur Ashe’s initial efforts, blacks in South Africa slowly but surely began to see change come about in their country." (via)

- - - - - -
photograph via 

Venster Kykers

Apartheid meant that socialising with somebody with a darker skin tone could turn your skin dark...

"There are in South Africa many thousands of people who cannot be classified according to a rigid system of racial identification. . . The lightest-coloured members of these ["border-line"] families often "passed "as whites and went to live in separate homes. Their darker relatives have been referred to as "Venster-Kykers" ["window lookers"] because, in order not to embarrass those who had "passed," they made a practice of looking studiously into shop windows in order to avoid greetings should they happen to meet on the streets." (Horrell, 1958:4, cited in Bowker & Star, 1999)

- - - - - -

photograph (waitress, Bezuidenhout Park, 1973; MCA/Goodman Gallery) by David Goldblatt via

Chuck Berry is Black

"You’re trying to say, ‘Is Chuck Berry black or white?’ Well, I’ll tell you, Chuck Berry is black, and he’s beautiful."

Chuck Berry

“When I first heard Chuck Berry. I didn’t consider that he was black. I thought he was a white hillbilly. Little did I know he was a great poet too." Dylan, 2015

"I mean, people that never seen it, after the record come out and such a big hit and we went on this tour, not knowing — you know, never seeing a picture or nothing of Chuck, they mistook it that Chuck was white. And we would walk out on the stage, there'd be a lot of ohs and aahs and whatever because he's a black man playing hillbilly music." (via)

The song "Maybellene" had sort of melded the black and white identity and made listeners believe Chuck Berry was white. Berry, despite being popular, did not always make it as far as the stage. One night early in his career in Knoxville, Tennessee, he was turned away by the club's manager who was shocked to see his skin tone and explained: "It's a country dance, and we had no idea that 'Maybellene' was recorded by a Negro man." Letting Berry perform would be against a city ordinance, he continued. So Berry listened to a white replacement band playing his music (via and via).

- - - - - - 

photograph via

John Coltrane, the Daily Struggles of a Black Musician Believing in Moving Forward Uniformly as a People

“Outside of the musical knowledge and exposure, Coltrane also apprenticed in the daily struggles of black musicians on the road. Segregation was a dominant factor in the majority of performance venues, as well as the surrounding geographical area. This determined where one could eat, use the bathroom, get gasoline, rent a hotel room, or even get a drink of water. And there was always the threat of racist police encounters. These cultural experiences were a part of his mentoring on the road and influenced the evolution of his conscious intent to use music as a force for goodness.”

Leonard Brown

Excerpts taken from an interview with John Coltrane's widow Alice Coltrane:

A lot was going on in the ’60s—black empowerment, civil rights, new jazz music was becoming the New Thing, which also had a political edge. How did John look upon all of that at the time—especially race (sic) politics? Was he with Dr. King or more with Malcolm [X]? 

He was very interested in the civil-rights movement. He appreciated both men from their different perspectives. He did see the unity in what they were trying to achieve, basically almost the same thing, taking different directions to reach that point of achievement.

He knew that Dr. Martin Luther King was an intelligent man, who would’ve probably found his quest in civil rights more horrible, more horrendous, by going through the system as a lawyer or a professor. John felt that [King] as a preacher could reach the heart of the people. And he felt that this was very good, that it was an asset, that he would be able to lead the people based on the spiritual sense instead of the civic, intellectual, legalistic. John felt if you can talk to their heart you’ll get their support, and you’ll get them to believe in what you’re doing.

About Malcolm, I know John had attended some of his talks that were in our area. Once he came back and I asked him, “How was the lecture?” and he said he thought it was superb. Different approaches to the same goal, telling the people [to] be wise, try to get some kind of economic freedom, be self-sufficient, depend on yourself, strengthen your family ties. Things like that, not even involved with religion, just basic areas of improvement so that you can make yourself a strong force for the good that needs to be achieved. He told me that he appreciated the way that when the really tough questions were asked from the audience, every one was answered with an intelligence which the people could comprehend.

I know that some musicians who were around at the time were more militant. How did John feel about that?

He would not be a part of it, and this is what many people wanted him to do. They’d say, “Why don’t you take your horn, use it as an instrument to rally people together, to awaken consciousness in these people to really stand and fight for their rights?” He just said, “That’s not the way for me to go with this music.” It was not the way for him, to take his music into a militant zone to try to stress a point. If anything, we saw him going up. I would imagine his philosophy would be closer to Martin Luther King Jr.: Let me try to reach your heart, your spirit and your soul, and then we can move forward uniformly as a people and accomplish great things.

He didn’t prefer violence to peace, and he was very disturbed by the consequences [of the riots in the mid-1960s] and all the people who were getting hurt in the rioting. I believe he called us once [when] he was out of town when those [riots] were happening. He was mainly on the phone with his mother, because she was with us at the time and she was quite upset about it. 

Alice Coltrane

- - - - -
- photograph via

Narrative images: Caution. Humans.

Just one of those road signs in Johannesburg, 1956: Caution. Beware of Natives.

photograph via

My great-grand-aunt Hattie McDaniel

I was at home contemplating the story about HBO Max temporarily pulling “Gone With The Wind” from its schedule, a 1939 film that included my great-grand-aunt, actress Hattie McDaniel. Suddenly, my disgust was elevated because it reminded me of the treatment she received from Hollywood and society. Her story was among the countless horrors from slavery to George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. We are talking about the destruction of millions of Black people, their families and their communities, and this is still happening in the current year of 2020.



In my own family, McDaniel, who won an Oscar for her performance in “Gone With The Wind,” was one of the many prime examples of this systemic mainstay of horror. Her parents, Henry and Susan McDaniel, were born into slavery. Henry, a Civil War veteran, was denied his military pension for decades after sustaining permanent injuries during battle. He continued to work tough labor jobs even in his diminished capacity. Susan also was motivated by her older, performing siblings (Otis, Sam and Etta) and longed to be on the road with them entertaining the masses. A young, impressionable Hattie inherited their work ethic and that drive catapulted her to success.

After her Oscar win, Hattie was still forced to play a maid or servant by Hollywood in film after film. Her goal was to survive as well as entertain, but she desired equal treatment just like everyone else in the world. She served her country as the chairman of the Hollywood Victory Committee (Negro Division) during World War II to entertain the troops and help sell war bonds.

Yet when she sought out better roles in Hollywood, they were not available to her. Her wish to be buried at the Hollywood Memorial Cemetery alongside her peers was rejected because of her skin color.

She and other Black cast members were not allowed to attend the premiere of “Gone With The Wind” in Atlanta in 1939. When she bought a home in the West Adams district in Los Angeles in the 1940s, her White neighbors formed a “restrictive covenant” against her and other minorities to remove them from their homes because they were Black. America has always looked at us as subhuman.

Beyond my family, the trans-Atlantic slave trade — which included slave-trading participants from Portugal, Italy, Denmark, France, Spain, England, the Netherlands and North America — sold Black bodies like cattle by the millions, and millions more were killed in the process. (...)

The Civil War (over 600,000 dead White bodies) was a war over who (and who did not) have the rights of ownership of Black people. The countless rapes of Black women. There were scores of White Christians (children included) buying food and drink as they were entertained by the hanging of Black men and women in trees. You have probably seen the photos, which can only be described as sheer horror. And there they were on display with broken necks, bodies limp and lifeless, battered, set on fire, and covered in blood from the gaping bullet holes from the target practice. And today, we are still witnessing similar executions such as the ones George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and countless others have experienced.

I have spoken with the staff and/or leaders of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the Motion Picture & Television Fund, the Rocky Mountain Public Media/PBS, Turner/HBO Max and others. Organizations are donating money to the NAACP, but that is not the answer. One solution is to make sure every city in this country regardless of ethnicity has the proper infrastructure and economic inclusion. The process will be uncomfortable (as it should be) for those who harbor a hatred and guilt they cannot reconcile.

This nation’s tragedy is that our very existence in America is the evidence of a crime and the most constant theme of Black existence in America.
Kevin John Goff

- - - - - - - -
photograph via

Going to School in L.A. in the 1970s

The photograph shows the first black US-American students to attend Plymouth Elementary School in Monrovia (Los Angeles County, California) arriving by bus on 10th of September 1970.

School desegregation and busing sparked protests in Los Angeles in the 1970s - more than two decades after the Supreme Court had outlawed segregation at schools - leading white middle-class families fleeing from the L.A. Unified School District and moving to more homogeneous suburban districts devoid of busing. Mandatory busing was seen as a means to integrate and remedy the harms of segregation since the black population was kept from living in so-called white neighbourhoods and, as a result, from attending schools in these neigbhourhoods. 

In 1979, forced busing was ended and L.A. shifted to a voluntary busing system under court supervision which became the so-called "magnet" programme. The programme aimed at becoming so attractive in academic terms that white students would be drawn to schools they would otherwise not attend. Another approach was to allow ethnic minority students from low-income South L.A. to take buses to scholls in traditionally white areas in the San Fernando Valley. Los Angeles has kept its magnet programme and white students attend some of them. Generally speaking, however, their number is rather low: 73.4% Latino, 10.5% white, 8.2% black American, 4.2% Asian (via).

- - - - - -
photograph (Fitzgerald Whitney/Los Angeles Times) via

The Intruder (1962)

"A man in a gleaming white suit comes to a small Southern town on the eve of integration. His name is Adam Cramer. He calls himself a social reformer. But his aim is to incite the people against letting black children into the town’s white school. Soon he has the white citizens of the town worked up." (MUBI)



C: "You may say I'm a social worker. I've come to do what I can for the town. The integration problem."
W: "Oh that. But that's all over. I mean they've got ten n***ers enrolled already in the school. And they're starting Monday."
C: "Yes, I know. But do you think it's right?"
A: "No, I sure don't. Neither does nobody. But it's the law."
C: "Whose law?"

::: The Intruder: WATCH
_ _ _ _
image via

The First Day

"I am Elizabeth Eckford. I am part of the group that became known as the Little Rock Nine. Prior to the [de]segregation of Central, there had been one high school for whites, Central High School; one high school for blacks, Dunbar. I expected that there may be something more available to me at Central that was not available at Dunbar; that there might be more courses I could pursue; that there were more options available. I was not prepared for what actually happened."

"The First Day, which was performed by Kendie Jones, is a dance interpretation of Eckford’s walk that day. Its monochrome aesthetic is an evocative nod towards the black-and-white images of Eckford's public ordeal, which was captured by press photographers and republished in papers internationally." (via)

THE FIRST DAY from barnaby roper on Vimeo.

"I was more concerned about what I would wear, whether we could finish my dress in time...what I was wearing was that okay, would it look good. The night before when the governor went on television and announced that he had called out the Arkansas National Guard, I thought that he had done this to insure the protection of all the students. We did not have a telephone, so inadvertently we were not contacted to let us know that Daisy Bates of NAACP had arranged for some ministers to accompany the students in a group. And so, it was I that arrived alone.

On the morning of September 4th, my mother was doing what she usually did. My mother was making sure everybody’s hair looked right and everybody had their lunch money and their notebooks and things. But she did finally get quiet and we had family prayer. I remember my father walking back and forth. My father worked at night and normally he would have been asleep at that time, but he was awake and he was walking back and forth chomping on cigar that wasn’t lit.

I expected that I would go to school as before on a city bus. So, I walked a few blocks to the bus stop, got on the bus, and rode to within two blocks of the school. I got off the bus and I noticed along the street that there were many more cars than usual. And I remember hearing the murmur of a crowd. But, when I got to the corner where the school was, I was reassured seeing these soldiers circling the school grounds. And I saw students going to school. I saw the guards break ranks as students approached the sidewalks so that they could pass through to get to school. And I approached the guard at the corner as I had seen some other students do and they closed ranks. So, I thought; 'Maybe I am not supposed to enter at this point.' So, I walked further down the line of guards to where there was another sidewalk and I attempted to pass through there. But when I stepped up, they crossed rifles. And again I said to myself; 'So maybe I’m supposed to go down to where the main entrance is.' So, I walked toward the center of the street and when I got to about the middle and I approached the guard he directed me across the street into the crowd. It was only then that I realized that they were barring me, that I wouldn’t go to school.

As I stepped out into the street, the people who had been across the street started surging forward behind me. So, I headed in the opposite direction to where there was another bus stop. Safety to me meant getting to that bus stop. It seemed like I sat there for a long time before the bus came. In the meantime, people were screaming behind me what I would have described as a crowd before, to my ears sounded like a mob."

Elizabeth Eckford, 1997

- - - -

Related postings

::: Narrative images: World Press Photo of the Year 1957: LINK
::: Narrative images: The Lost Year: LINK
::: Narrative images: Charles Thompson goes to school: LINK
::: Ruby & The New Orleans School Crisis: LINK

- - - -

gif via

Nick Gabaldon. Surfing against Segregation.

"Race wasn't really an issue at Malibu. Everyone liked him. And he was a pretty smooth surfer, too."
Rick Grigg (a teenager who surfed with Gabaldon)



Nick Gabaldon (1927-1951) was the first documented black US-American surfer. He learned to surf at the Inkwell in Santa Monica which was a tiny (about 60 meters), roped-off, segregated beach designated for the black community at the time. Gabaldon paddled many miles to Malibu, "one of California's best waves" since he had no car and surfed on a borrowed lifeguard's paddleboard (via and via and via).

According to most reports, on June 5, 1951, Nick Gabaldon caught his last wave. During an eight-foot south swell, Gabaldon lost control of his board and struck a piling beneath the Malibu Pier. His board washed up on the beach shortly after. Three days later, lifeguards recovered his body, and the small community of (white) surfers who had come to accept and respect Nick mourned. (...)
For Nick, surfing was a vehicle to improve his world. The ocean was his medium, which is fitting because the sea knows no prejudice; it’s the ultimate equalizer. As is a basketball court. Or a soccer pitch. Or a football field. Or, especially, a great story. (via)

- - - - - -
image via

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Martin Luther King's Letter from Jefferson County Jail

16 April 1963
My Dear Fellow Clergymen:
While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I came across your recent statement calling my present activities "unwise and untimely." Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. (...) I think I should indicate why I am here in Birmingham, since you have been influenced by the view which argues against "outsiders coming in." (...)



(...) more basically, I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. (...) Moreover, I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. (...)
Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known. Negroes have experienced grossly unjust treatment in the courts. There have been more unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case. On the basis of these conditions, Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation. (...)
You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood. The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation. I therefore concur with you in your call for negotiation. Too long has our beloved Southland been bogged down in a tragic effort to live in monologue rather than dialogue. (...)



We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. (...)
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. (...)
(...) I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.
In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed. (...)
Never before have I written so long a letter. I'm afraid it is much too long to take your precious time. I can assure you that it would have been much shorter if I had been writing from a comfortable desk, but what else can one do when he is alone in a narrow jail cell, other than write long letters, think long thoughts and pray long prayers? (...)
Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

- - - - - - -
photographs via (Rev. Abernathiy, left, and Rev. King leading demonstrators as they attempt to march on Birmingham City Hall, 12 April 1963; AP Photo/Horace Cort) and via and via

Bob Adelman's Understanding of Patriotism

Patriotism. It seemed to me that the greatest failing of the country had been its been its treatment of black people. In the ‘50s and ‘60s, the country was really quite paralyzed on the race mater. The court had spoken in 1954 but Congress was controlled by Dixiecrats, and no president in 100 years had said that segregation was wrong. I think that some people think that segregation was just some way that the races were separated. But, in fact, it was an organized system of terror. If a black person in the Deep South wanted to vote or use segregated accommodations or many other things... if he defied the customs, he ran the risk of losing his job or getting attacked, either by the authorities or by the Klan. It was awful and so un-American, really. These were our brothers and sisters who were being mistreated. I thought that the race question was the biggest unsolved problem of America. So that’s why I say it was patriotism.
(Bob Adelman on what drew him to document the civil rights movement)



Growing up in New York, were you surrounded by other people who felt the same way you did?

In the North, I think there was a general feeling that things like lynchings and poll taxes and discrimination were bad things. Though they were sometimes practiced in the North. Discrimination could be very ugly there, too. Especially, if a black family after WWII bought a house in an old white neighborhood. They could be terrorized or burned down. Racism wasn’t just a southern problem. But I guess I came from idealistic people. My mother, who I lived with in the suburbs of New York City — I remember as a little boy, it was raining and I was complaining because I couldn’t go outside, and so she said, “Oh, but it’s good for the farmers.” Which would not be a typical response. I’m not religious, but I guess I’m culturally Jewish and I certainly was very much inspired by the prophets. We’d just seen the Holocaust, so the idea of any kind of racial stigmatization was awful.

Did you feel like your photography and involvement in the movement was subversive?

No, I don’t think so. Obviously, the powers that be — particularly in the South, the local government and police — their job was to enforce segregation. And many, many people in the South supported it. In the context of challenging local authorities, it was subversive. I was regularly arrested for photographing, sometimes it was a good thing. Sometimes when people were about to get ugly or violent, getting arrested was a better alternative. Gunnar Myrdal in “The American Dilemma” said segregation was so un-American and that as soon as most Americans actually understood what segregation was, it would fall away. And in a profound sense, that what the civil rights movement did. It revealed to the country just what the underpinnings of segregation were, which were the systematic suppression of participation in public life.

Your website makes a poignant statement about your work: “His subjects knew which side he was on. And he stayed the course.” How did you or do you view the role of photojournalism during that time period? How did photography — and in your case, impassioned photography — interact with the movement itself?

I think that all art is a way in which we hold up experience and look at it. Photography does it in a very immediate way. I hoped that photographs of mine would help change opinions and understandings. That we would, by our concerted efforts, show how wrong and despicable these practices were. And, in fact, thats what did happen. The country was frozen, but when the students protested [in Birmingham in 1963], I thought that it was sheer genius. By taking their bodies — our bodies — and putting them where they were forbidden to go, that was the lever that would really break the system. I had great faith in that tactic and of course the rightness of breaking these barriers.

How long did you follow the movement as a photographer?

I started taking pictures in the ‘50s on my own, and I started volunteering with CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) in 1961. And I guess by ‘63 I’d say, my pictures starting appearing in papers quite regularly, like Newsweek and Life.

Were you surrounded by other photographers early on, or were you mostly surrounded by activists?

Oh, I had friends in the movement and friends who were photographers. Our great inspiration was always Martin Luther King, who I came to know. I was very involved in the movement. Rudy Lombard was one of my close friends. Dorothea Lange was a mentor of mine. I was friendly with [civil rights photographer] Bruce Davidson. Alfred Eisenstaedt said photographers are like spiders, they don’t hang out with each other. But I had photo friends, and artists — Jim Rosenquist, the painter, Larry rivers.



What is one of your most memorable moments following the movement from the South to Washington?

I took the iconic photo of Martin Luther King in Washington. That certainly was one of the greatest moments, for me, in American history! For 50 years I wondered why I was the only person there to capture that moment. I think by not being a member of the press, but being active in the movement, I was able to go up the stairs and get past the guards because they knew me. I had no press credentials. All the press were in the gallery, in front of the podium at the Lincoln Memorial. So the podium was on the steps and I guess because I wasn’t a press member, I was able to take the picture. That was the place to be.

I’d heard the doc speak so many times, and I knew he was going to say something amazing. The March on Washington was two things. One, it was a celebration because race was on the national agenda. Kennedy said segregation was wrong. What began as a movement of a few hundred or thousand was suddenly a mass movement. So we wanted to celebrate all that. But it was also a protest. Congress was still controlled by Dixiecrats. How they were going to be brought around was a very big “if.” When the doc delivered the Dream speech, I remember I put the camera down and was thinking that speech was so powerful and delivered in the shadow of Lincoln. His truth is marching on. I really believed that it was possible that Congress would somehow come around. The momentum would be very difficult to ignore.

Another moment was when I took the Birmingham photographs of the water hosing, which were very symbolic. Black bodies were being hosed by white firemen. In the past, when the authorities would hose people, they’d just run away. But this was a different time. Instead of being intimidated and frightened, they gathered and stood up to the hoses. It became emblematic of what was going on. Terror was going to be resisted and not given in to. I gave that photo to the doc, and he looked at it and he said it was startling that out of such pain was such beauty.

What do you hope is the impact of showcasing these photographs today?

I hope the show is a toolkit for young people on how to go about transforming things. People need to be trained and organized and have stated goals. In order to bring about change, a lot of work goes into getting other people together and having demonstrations and picketing and hanging posters. People’s right to peacefully protest is one of the most American parts of the Constitution.

- - - - - -

- interview excerpts via
- photographs by (People's Wall, Worlds's Fair, New York, 1965) and of Bob Adelman via and via