Ep. 64 – Struggle for Justice: Civil Rights Photography with Don Carleton

[0:00:07 Peniel] Welcome to Race and Democracy, a podcast on the intersection between race, democracy, public policy, Social justice and citizenship. Mhm. On today’s show we are pleased to have with us Dr Don Carlton, who is executive director of the Briscoe Center for American History and the JR part and chair in the Archives of american history at the University of texas at Austin. He’s the author of 11 books including red scare a breed so rare and conversations with Cronkite. He is also the executive producer of two PBS documentaries When I Rise and cactus, Jack Lone Star on Capitol Hill. Uh And today we’re gonna be talking about his brand new book, struggle for justice. Four decades of civil rights photography, which is really a brilliant foray into not just the photos of the period, but he looks at a cast of black and white photographers who who really were an indelible part of shaping the civil rights movement uh and no less than a authority such as martin Luther. King Jr said as much so Don Carlton welcome my friend to race and Democracy

[0:01:25 Don] Panel. My friend, I’m delighted to be here.

[0:01:29 Peniel] Let’s start with, you know why struggle for justice right now? It seems like this came out at the perfect time in this year of Black Lives Matter protests this year of the pandemic, the election, but so much more interest in race and anti racism, both for our contemporary period. But of course, we always look back to the civil rights era because it’s such a an evocative era of

[0:01:58 Don] struggles for racial

[0:01:59 Peniel] justice. So what inspired you to do this book?

[0:02:04 Don] Well, I wish I could say that it was planned to the Nth degree, but it wasn’t actually this book was supposed to be published in spring of this year instead of the fault. But we got caught up with the production got caught up. When I say production. I mean the man, literally the manufacturing was caught up in a covid crisis. And but it’s really, the book has its roots back in 2020 15, 5 years ago when we were called upon to deal with the confederate statues on the campus of the University of texas at Austin. And that I got us deeply involved in that whole issue. Uh, the symbolism symbols that were used for racial reasons, including statues and you know, as we were dealing with that we ultimately, of course, as you know, became the custodians, the keepers of those confederate statues and we have one of them on display and the centers and educational exhibit. But this book that we’re talking about now struggle for justice literally comes from that experience. The other thing, there’s another thing involved here and that beyond the confederate statues that happened in 2015 and again in 2017, they’re actually two rounds of that, but also the election of donald trump to the presidency in 2016. And that was really the sort of the thing that pushed us forward, go ahead and to try to bring attention to a massive archive that we have that we have gathered and preserved and made available for teaching and research uh initiative that we began really 40 years ago. And we decided that the time had come with the issues revolving around everything from Ferguson, which was even earlier, uh, to to again the confederate statues. Um, this is all Before Black Lives Matter actually, and that we would uh it was time to bring attention uh, to this incredible resource of material visual resource documenting the earlier struggles uh of the fifties and sixties. And the title itself, struggle for Justice is a nod toward the, you know, it’s it’s self explanatory in some ways, but it’s also a nod to the idea that this is a continuing struggle. This just exhibit that we didn’t exhibit. And then the book is based on the exhibit. But anyway, that’s how it all came about.

[0:04:34 Peniel] I want to start with one picture before even delving into the photographers. The earliest picture in here, as far as I can tell is from Roy Aldrich. Uh It’s George Hughes and shackles with an with an unidentified lawman, Sherman texas 1930 I thought this was really, really powerful. This is 90 years ago and these issues of the criminal justice system and black people and the George Floyd protests. We see just in this photo of such a long arc there and I’m not sure what happened to George use.

[0:05:14 Don] I wish I knew, I wish I knew who actually. We don’t know who the photographer was. Uh, but we wanted to bring uh, George Hughes is uh, instead of us just saying unknown photographer, we wanted to make sure his George Hughes was identified in this photograph. So that’s an unusual photograph in terms of the way the book was put together because all the other photographs are taken by someone and we named them. But we wanted to bring some humanity back to this fellow and put his name in there. But we don’t know who the photographer was. But I’m sadly, I must say Roy Aldrich was a texas ranger. And uh, that photograph comes from his archive. We have his papers uh, and the papers are literally full of images that are pretty horrific. Especially photographs of uh, of corpses, dead body, you know, bodies of mexican americans along the border of texas and Mexico that when he was a ranger, they like to take photographs of the people that

[0:06:18 Peniel] killed.

[0:06:19 Don] So this is but you know, this we put this in there because of I think it should be obvious. You know, we’re trying to show in some small way that this had, you know, legacy much earlier than what we’re dealing with.

[0:06:35 Peniel] I want you to and have I wanna have a conversation about the preface because you introduce these photographers, RC Hickman, um uh, Charles more flip schulke. Uh, those of us who are historians of the civil rights movement, really sort of recognize those names, but you you definitely give more um more depth than breath to them as as really artists and activists in their own rights because it was so dangerous taking these pictures of violence um during civil rights demonstrations. So let’s talk about, you know, you know, who are these folks? Why were they so important? Um and why have they sort of been lost to history even as we rely on their photos to understand that

[0:07:26 Don] history? Well, sadly, you know, we have a huge collection of the archives of nearly 70 photographers. And by that, I mean we have the entire archives, which means negatives, you know, contact sheets, prints, even their papers. So we focus on the photographers themselves. We want to know as much as we can have about them. And sadly, uh you know, I think it’s just true of all of us. We know the photographs, but we don’t know who who took them most of the time. Um and that was especially true back in the days when most these photographs were published in magazines and newspapers. You have great photographers like these folks that you just mentioned, who were doing wire service photography. They were freelancing for the magazines and so forth. And often they would wouldn’t get credit, they wouldn’t be credited in the photograph. So it’s not surprising that people that they’ve been lost to history and you’re absolutely right. Most of them have been. And again, that’s another reason why we’ve been doing this work is to bring them back to history. And one of the ways we’re doing this is uh, we struggle for justice.

[0:08:36 Peniel] And one of the things you show is Charles moore’s printing instructions on this photo of protests in Birmingham Alabama in 1963. And he writes down on this photo important to make this a gutsy print, that we will uh, still make a good copy. Uh, keep good detail in this area. Do not let this go gray. And you’re seeing these black, uh nonviolent demonstrators, These peaceful demonstrators being hit with basically water cannons, hoses that are powerful enough to strip the bark off of trees. Uh, they’re being brutalized, but that was really interesting and that I hadn’t seen before.

[0:09:18 Don] Well that’s why we yeah, you know Panetta, that’s why we collect the entire work of and you know, most museums will collect, you know, five or 10 of the best prints of a particular photographer. And that’s not what we do. We want. We want everything. Even the stuff that they consider that’s not their best because we look at all these images as being really rich with an information and evidence that we can use, uh, to study. They can talk these photographs can talk to us really. Um, you know the way to text us a diary or a newspaper story or whatever, they can be read. So, uh, the photograph you’re talking about or I should say the contact the, you know, Charles more like a lot of these photographers was more than just simply a news photographer. He used his camera as a weapon against racism and he did that consciously. That’s true. If some of the other photographers see who we have in this book, Charles probably was most famous for his work. Uh well he worked mainly in in Alabama and Mississippi and he he really before the, before the Birmingham movement where he which he documented visually and some of the best known iconic photographs of that or his photographs. He also covered the riots and Oxford Mississippi at the University of Mississippi ole Miss when James MEREDITH attempted to enroll their uh and he took a photograph that has become famous and it was a photograph of some Mississippi sheriffs standing around and one of them has a club in his hands and he’s holding it like a baseball bat. And all the other sheriffs are standing around laughing and uh powerful image. And there’s a book that was written entirely about that photograph called Sons of Mississippi that you’re probably familiar with written by paul Hendrickson. Um So Charles moore’s work is often used really as evidence in ways that he really intended it to be used. The power of photography is dr King would refer to it.

[0:11:32 Peniel] Mhm. Now in the first part of the book I thought it was really interesting. Um And it’s titled separate, unequal is these photos um One the Bruce roberts photo with the the white only uh signs at a store, the carl it was it was sake collection. The Brown Sisters um from Brown versus Board of Education. Um The RC Hickman, the unequal school facilities in Euless texas, you know, don talked to us about the civil rights movement in texas too because I think one of the great things about this collection is that you get some photos of texas because texas has been really understudied in the civil rights movement.

[0:12:20 Don] Oh, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.

[0:12:21 Peniel] Austin Dallas Houston san Antonio but really just rural parts too. But I love this colored city hall building in italy texas.

[0:12:30 Don] Yes. Who knew? Italy

[0:12:33 Peniel] texas. Maybe it’s remarkable marquis of the segregated Starlight theatre um in Dallas texas and this. I’m a big movie buff done. So this was really poignant for me because it says southwest finest for colored americans. You know that that brings me to tears you know, to see a sign like that and you know they’re praising it because this is just the way it is.

[0:12:56 Don] Yes, exactly. Oh absolutely RC Higman was, I got to know where I got to be very close to. R. C. RC. Had his photographs stored in shoe boxes in his garage and his home in South Oak Cliff Dallas. Uh When I found him, he was a carpet salesman. Uh actually quite a successful carpet salesman. I kind of laughed at that because our C. Was one of these guys who could you know, sell ice to Eskimos. So he was incredible. And uh at any rate he, when he got out of the army in World War Two, he learned photography in the army. Like so many of these guys did actually uh and he was a native Texan named with Dallas and he he set up shop with his camera in south Dallas, a dominant area you know dominated by african american residents. And he became the unofficial photographer for the whole black community in Dallas. So that’s where, that’s what he was doing. He did all kinds of commercial work of course, but he also was a freelancer for black publications and that were mainly published in the north, the Pittsburgh paper for example. Uh and the CPI also hired him. Uh and that’s where some of these photographs that you’re referring to uh with the schools for example. Uh there’s another photograph of uh well it also the like you said, they asked, let me go back the HCP asked him to go and document some of the things that were happening in texas. Uh some of them were for legal purposes. Uh you know, is evidence of uh there was no such thing as separate but equal. I mean like the school photograph you’re talking about. Um and you know, RC used to tell me, he said, you know, people thought that was just a setup photograph with all of that. It was a school room in total disarray and he said uh that was very typical of these countries. Schools that were that were meant for black students. But anyhow he did this freelance work on the side and that’s where um that’s where these photographs came from. RC died uh not not long ago. Um But he was one of, you know, I’ve got to be very close friends and are missing a lot actually. Um Calvin Littlejohn’s another one you mentioned Calvin Littlejohn day, he covered Fort Worth and he was he didn’t Fort Worth what RC Higman did in Dallas. He was a community photographer for the black community. Uh The other thing I want to mention about a little john uh Hickman. Littlejohn was a little older than Hickman. But they their work, their archives. One things I got excited about when I saw their archives was the fact that they spent, they had so many images of, of ordinary black citizens living really ordinary lives, uh, in their their island communities, their island communities within the cities. Uh and so there’s a rich archive of material, visual material, particularly in our seas of black owned businesses of of the sort of self sufficiency that was so common uh, in these black island uh communities. And, you know, in the midst of these big cities, very much like Harlem. Um, and so that it’s a great record of showing these folks who are, you know, victims of jim crow laws and racial segregation, trying to work as hard as they could to lead lead normal lives. And there’s no, there are no famous

[0:16:31 Peniel] people in the pictures.

[0:16:33 Don] Uh, it’s just regular folks and uh, you know, there was folks I’ve learned that those kinds of images are not all that common.

[0:16:41 Peniel] It’s great Calvin Littlejohn, the picture of Dr King and love field in Dallas,

[0:16:46 Don] october 20

[0:16:47 Peniel] second, uh, 1959 really, for four years and one month to the day of uh president Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. It was extraordinary. Um tell us about flip schulke. This is somebody who is very, very well known in certain circles. Uh, there’s some great pictures from Schalke here and his relationship with, about his relationship with Dr King as well. Um you have one from um the Montgomery County courthouse uh with Dr King and ralph Abernathy, a very striking image. Doctor King speaking to reporters and the backdrop is the american flag. You know, you’ve got a black black protester holding up the american flag. And I thought that was really striking too because I think in a lot of ways during the civil rights movement, at least during its heroic period, black protesters and and their white allies tried to try to really utilize the flag and weaponize the flag for racial justice in ways that at other points in our history we see the flag being used for the opposite

[0:18:00 Don] right? So

[0:18:01 Peniel] there’s this, this idea of sort of the flag and patriotism and sort of the most patriotic thing you can do is before, you know, racial justice, anti racism, equal rights, black citizenship and dignity. So tell us

[0:18:13 Don] about flip show. Well, just related to what you just said, I want to say that, you know, we like to think that photographers just simply go out and they snap a picture. Uh, but uh, flip schulke uh worked as hard as he could to get the american flag in as many images as he could for the very purpose you’re talking about. I mean the very thing you’re talking about, flip consciously did. So you’ll you’ll see an amazing when you go through his collection, you’ll see amazing number of photographs. Whereas Dr King uh with the american flag somewhere nearby, uh because he’s trying to make that point that you just made. But flip schulke was a photographer in Miami florida. And you met Dr King back in 1958 actually, and they became friends. And eventually as the civil rights movement really accelerated, he started following Dr King around and Dr King, they became good friends and Dr King asked him to be his unofficial photographer. Uh because Dr King was having trouble having black photographers uh uh really documenting his work because the police frequently beat up. The black photographers took their cameras away from them, confiscated their film. And the white photographers were able, although the white photographers face some of that themselves, uh it wasn’t nearly as bad as what the black photographers had to put up with. So as I said earlier, Dr King believed in the power of photography and he and flip schulke kinda had a pact that they made that flip would take all these photographs and he had all these connections within the media. He was a magazine photographer. Uh and so many of the most iconic photographs that you see of Dr King now. And I know your work with Dr King, Dr King’s story as well as Malcolm axes, you’ve probably seen most of them. Um they’re usually flips work, they’re they’re usually flips photographs. The thing that that is pretty amazing about flips relationship with martin Dr King, martin Luther king is that he became close to family as well and they, that was a very private family actually and Dr King did something he never allowed another photographer to do and that was let flip coming to his home uh and take photographs of inside his house, of his family, his Children. Um there’s a great series of photographs of Dr King with his kids in the back yard of his house there in Atlanta, uh and their own swings and they’re, you know, they’re playing and so forth. Uh and to my knowledge, there, there are no other private moments photographed like that of Dr King’s and when Doctor Doctor King asked him when he won the Nobel prize, when Dr King won the Nobel prize, he asked flip to come, that’s when flip came into his house and took photographs because he wanted this people to see what kind of a normal life he had. I’m talking about Dr king did well after Dr king was assassinated, Corretta called, if you flip was the first photographer that correct king called and asked she asked him to come to Atlanta immediately and he then stayed with her and followed her all the way through past the burial. So there’s some iconic photographs of her at the funeral as well. That flip flip took, you know, also, um, he took uh, some great photographs of, uh, and you got to be good friends with Muhammad Ali and uh, he has, he eventually published a couple of really good books of photographs that he took a volley as well. Uh, but you know, I should point out being, you know, both of us associated with the University of texas. Uh, it’s a king photograph. Excuse me. It is a flip schulke photograph of King that is we used as the model for the king statue on our campus and yeah, yeah, that’s that whole statue is based on photography. That flip took and flip came for the dedication and he got martin Luther King the third to come to that as his guest. And we had an exhibit of flips photographs up at the time and uh martin King came and looked at. The exhibit would flip and uh but yeah, there’s that connection. Uh it’s kind of an interesting thing. Okay,

[0:22:48 Peniel] talk to me about the there’s two fantastic pictures of Malcolm X one by Eddie Adams 1964 with Malcolm X is facing the camera and the other is um from the bob Gmo of archive and this is of Malcolm photographing Muhammad Ali at the Hampton house in Miami florida in 1964 after Ali has won the heavyweight Champion ship. And it’s interesting because there’s a, there’s a movie coming out called One Night in Miami about that evening, right after Ali wins the Heavyweight Champion Ship and Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali and the soul singer Sam Cooke and the NFL legend Jim Brown all spend the evening together.

[0:23:37 Don] All right.

[0:23:38 Peniel] Um, and, and so it’s really extraordinary that that photo here in struggle for Justice really is evocative because it’s right around the time that that happens.

[0:23:50 Don] That’s correct. Yeah. That’s one of my favorite photographs panel that I have, that photograph of a large cut print of that photograph on a wall in my home. Oh, really? Yeah, I would love this. This is a beautiful photograph. Yeah. Uh, it’s too bad that you folks who are listening. This can’t see these pictures. But uh, this is a fucking they

[0:24:08 Peniel] will when they get the book struggle for justice every time. Yeah. Four decades of civil rights photography. No, absolutely. By the book.

[0:24:16 Don] And this is a great

[0:24:17 Peniel] book for the holidays to this is a great this is gonna be a great gift.

[0:24:21 Don] Well, thank you for that. And uh, yeah, you can see all these photographs and when you get the book. And but the thing I love, I just love the photograph. I mean, you know, there you’ve got uh, you know, Malcolm X is taking a photograph of ali uh, in this cafe and it’s just crowned with people. The cafe is all behind Muhammad. Ali. That’s you can’t really do it justice, but describing it. Uh, but I love the photograph.

[0:24:51 Peniel] Yeah, he’s only 22 years old here as well. Um, let’s talk about the black panthers and some of the radical radicalism um, that we see in this collection too, because it’s really civil rights and black power through the collection. I was struck by the flip schulke um photo of Lawrence County and um poor rural people, black folks in Lounge county Alabama between Selma and Montgomery and the buckle of the black belt voting for the black panther. And that that symbol, the black panthers coming out of the Lounge County freedom Organization, Stokely Carmichael and Snick and local organizations, student nonviolent coordinating committee. And that’s what’s gonna inspire, Huey Newton, bobby seale, Kathleen Cleaver. All these other icons that we see by the second half of the 19 sixties and the black panther Party for Self defense. And then there’s some there’s a great picture uh, steven shame because I want you to talk about Stephen shames. I’ve met steven, he’s really wonderful and uh sort of the unofficial photographer of the panthers. And there’s a great picture of a young young boy with the black panthers people’s petition uh bobby Seale with James baldwin and James baldwin has sort of made a fabulous, come back in our imagination through raoul peck, who I know who’s a family friend. And did I am not your negro Haitian artist and filmmaker. And the new book begin again by Eddie baldwin about James baldwin as well. Um So talk to us about James vault, excuse me, talk to us about Stephen shames.

[0:26:37 Don] Steve was uh yeah, steve uh from uh he lives in Brooklyn now, he’s from California, but he was a student at the University of California, Berkeley uh in the late sixties, mid to late sixties. And he was involved in uh he was a photographer then as a student and he was involved in the anti war movement. Uh he’s a white photographer, he’s a white person. Um and bobby Seale came over to a rally that was that they were having an anti war rally on the campus of Derek Berkeley. And they met up somehow and became good friends and Seal almost like uh really martin Luther King still was looking for a white photographer uh to document the activities of the black panthers. Uh and uh steve was extremely uh steve shames, was very interested in now. So through bobby Seale, the co founder of the panthers, as you know, um that’s how uh he had steve had such great access uh to to the panthers, they let uh you know, Huey Newton and bobby Seale and the others let steve come in and take photographs that other photographers didn’t have access to. And he’s uh taken most of the iconic images that we recognize today uh from the panthers. Uh you know, that photograph of bobby seale and James baldwin is also a great another, I think grateful to photograph was taken in 1969. Bobby was in san Francisco county jail. Uh you know, we had bobby here when we cook, when we, when we got the archive, we got steve shames archive was just tens of actually hundreds of thousands of photographs. Uh bobby came into the program for us with steve and it’s clear that they are still very close friends. Uh and uh and that obviously was very proud of what steve accomplished for them visually. Most of a lot of steve’s photographs wound up in the black Panther newspaper of course, and I just, I’m really proud of that of the, of getting that collection to add to the archives that we’ve been building. I want to add that steve. You know, his whole career has been documenting uh the effects of poverty on Children. And uh he’s got he’s done a couple of books uh you know, of kids, uh really young kids who are steeped in poverty. Um and it’s one of his issues, one of the things that he’s very interested in

[0:29:17 Peniel] who was James spider martin.

[0:29:19 Don] James Spider martin. He said he was a little short guy who played football in Alabama as a kid when he was in high school and he was as fast as, you know, you can imagine. And they called him a spider because he, he could move quickly. So he got his nickname Spider. But uh, spider martin is the way he went the rest of his life. And he was really, he was a photographer, started as a news photographer with the burning ham news uh newspaper in Alabama. And uh, he wanted to cut, he heard there was something going on in Selma Alabama and that was the murder that set the whole thing off. Uh, and uh, he wanted to cover it. He wanted to go down and find out what was going on in his newspaper, refused remember him news that it wasn’t a story. They didn’t really care about it. You know, another black person getting killed. And so he just went on his own. He just paid for his trip down to Selma and spent time in Selma. And so he was there and met john Lewis, uh, and got involved. Really. He spent a lot of time, they were just simply photographing the Selma movement, the whole thing, uh, that finally led to the March on Montgomery. And it’s his images. He was a lot of photographers came later after bloody sunday, uh, and photographed in March. But the Spider was there at Bloody sunday. And his most iconographic photograph is called the two minute warning,

[0:30:57 Peniel] which was taken.

[0:30:59 Don] Yeah, talking has taken on March the 7th, 1965. And as the, you know, infamous photograph of the Alabama state troopers pointing at john Lewis and literally saying, you know, you have two minutes to endure at the course the Edmund Pettus bridge on the road. They’ve crossed the bridge and then come back over the road and there, met by all of these Alabama state troopers. And the two minute warning means that he was giving uh, louis two minutes to get off the road to leave. Uh, I should say, Lewis and all the other folks who were behind Lewis and that’s uh, that’s one of his most famous photographs. But spotter continued to stand there and take a photograph of the of the beatings that nearly killed Lewis, actually, he was beaten so badly, and some other folks. So a lot of the uh photographs that you’ve seen of that bloody sunday, your spotters, if if not all of them to tell you the truth. And he did, of course, also photographed the Marshal Montgomery as well. Um So his archive is really a rich visual uh resource for studying that whole selma story.

[0:32:15 Peniel] And one of his photos is of a young man marching, and he’s got the flag upside down and S. O. S. A call for help. Um Another which is the really wonderful cover is from Charles, more women singing freedom songs during the summer to Montgomery, March 1965. And this is interesting because it’s two black women with, you know, with this white woman in the center, uh and she’s got this nick button with black and white shaking hands. And that’s the cover of struggle for justice. Tell us why did you pick this cover? I think it’s a wonderful cover. But it’s it’s an I haven’t I don’t recall actually seeing this photo before this.

[0:33:03 Don] Yeah, it’s not well known. And uh when we were looking through the archive and making decisions about, by the way, I will I want to mention that in doing this exhibit and identifying these photographs. It was done with two of my staff members, three of my staff members of Sarah’s owner who is our head of exhibits. Uh Dr Sarah Soner and Alison back, who’s our director of special projects and Ben Right, Who, Communications person and Amy Bowman who is our photographs archivists. And they deserve some of the credit. A lot of the credit, frankly for the way this looks. But I love this photograph, and I I I spotted it pretty early as a potential uh really uh photographed representing the exhibit. Um and we used it that way uh to advertise the exhibit, and then we decided the University of Texas press decided that they wanted to actually publish a book on the exhibit. Uh, this was the photograph that I really wanted, because I just love the exhibit. I mean, excuse me, loved the photograph and Charles Morris, you said took it, It’s on the March two from Selma to Montgomery. And uh it just, I don’t know, I mean, you know, photographs mean a lot of different things to different people, but to me, it’s sort of just sort of uh it’s an image of innocence in some respects of love and innocence in the midst of all this brutality and malevolence. Uh and it’s a spirited photographs and shows there’s a look of determination there that it just appeals to me.

[0:34:45 Peniel] You know. Uh I don I want to talk about something that I noticed, especially in the second half of the book, you know, because you just said um that backdrop of, of malevolence and and um brutality. If we go to flip schulke, uh september 10th 1963 the students yelling, uh, crickets at african american students, the white students yelling. I thought this was really remarkable, but I want to ask you about this as a piece of several other photos. So you see these white students and these are white women yelling and it’s really interesting when you think about trump the elections, white white female voters.

[0:35:23 Don] And this is,

[0:35:23 Peniel] yeah, but then you also have a great picture from april 1965 north Carolina, grand dragon bob jones and an unidentified klansmen preparing for a cross burning. Uh Then there’s some contact sheets about Birmingham. But one of the things I thought was really terrific that was put in here was um the young man who was beaten from the Naacp in Dallas texas, january 1951. Then it’s followed by dr king being brutally arrested king’s funeral. Um But one of the things I wanted to talk about two is not only just the pictures of the the urban rebellions in D. C. After King’s funeral, but of of Canton Mississippi. Because I write about this, I write about this in my biography of Stokely carmichael. The violence in Canton. Uh in some ways is even more brutal than the violence in Selma. But you don’t have the same outpouring, right? So, I just wanted to talk about the brutality of the period and the way in which these pictures really evoke. And they do the brutality in a panoramic way. It’s from this kind of real, real um, hatred from these students, these young women, uh, in Montgomery Alabama all the way up to, you know, the destruction of property, the assassination of king, the beating up of people by law enforcement. So, so talk to us about like, you know, how our photos able to sort of convey that in a way that at times really words cannot.

[0:37:00 Don] Well, I would argue that they also, they’re they’re still photography is probably the most powerful kind of uh, image thing that you can including more so than words. I mean, of course, we all aware and have heard a million times about it. You know, pictures worth more than 1000 words or a million words or whatever you want to say. I think they’re also much more powerful than movie, uh moving motion pictures. Uh it’s one of the reasons why we’ve really just or so uh intent on collecting as many of these as we can, because, you know, an image is still images, something that you can set and contemplate and study. Um you can look at the photograph, the motion pictures that were taken of bloody sunday. In fact, that’s famous photograph that spider martin took of the two minute warning is also on film, the on motion picture film, but, you know, you don’t need any device is to look at uh you know, to look at a still photograph. They’re they’re incredibly, there’s so much more accessible. Uh and and uh, they just, you know, I think they’re just more valuable. And there’s something about our brains also, uh they’re wired in such a way as to process uh still images, I think, uh, than than motion picture images. And that’s just, you know, there’s some studies about that. But yeah, we wanted to obviously show um, this whole movement was, you know, had was constantly uh, attacked and people involved or assaulted either verbally, like the women that you’re talking about. The young girls. Actually, they’re not that old look like they’re teenagers. Maybe a little older, screaming, God only knows what you can just imagine what they’re saying. These awful looks on their faces. And if you saw a motion picture of that, it would just briefly shoot by you. Uh, but there’s the still photographs is riveting. You just sit there and stare at it and you’re wondering, what are they saying? What are they thinking? Who are they, what do they do now? Are they ashamed of these of this photograph? So, we just wanted to make sure that um you know, all this anger and malevolence and brutality was not left out of uh of this story that we’re doing. That we do with this book. I don’t know if that answers your question. Actually, no it does. I I wanna, you know, I think

[0:39:42 Peniel] these photos are just so so powerful and give us such a different, I think they add a richness and a texture to a period that is soft and discussed, but not necessarily with a lot of depth, you know? So I just think these focuses which is very very powerful.

[0:40:01 Don] Well, the photograph you mentioned of the of the person who had been beaten up was taken by R. C. Hickman and that’s another example of the kind of photography that the kind of documentation that the AkP wanted RC two, you know, to do for them.

[0:40:19 Peniel] Well, you know, don my my last question is in the context of Black Lives Matter and how we live now and where, um, you know, we have all these digital images, we have all this social media. Why is still photography is so so important? Both struggle for justice and, you know, this four decades of civil rights photography historically, but contemporaneously, why why why why should we why should we really care? And I know why, but I want

[0:40:50 Don] you to say, well, like I said earlier, this they really are. We look at it as evidence. Uh, but uh, they do in fact uh, document a moment in time, uh that photographs are evidence, historical evidence that they’re used by historians. As like I said, they’re red like diaries. They have information on them, historians long uh ignored and social scientists long ignored photography, but no more. Uh they fact photographs can now be used as evidence within an action, within the text, within a narrative of books. Uh, and uh so we we, you know, they’re valuable to us for teaching and research because I can’t I personally don’t think there’s a better way, as we said earlier, to transmit this information more vividly than by these images, uh far more powerfully than we can words. And I we live in a visual society now, even more so than when these photographs were taken. So in many ways, they’re more easily disseminated now through all the media that we have. And I just think that we’re fortunate, lucky that we have these images still with us. That’s been our business is to make sure that they’re preserved and they’re not thrown away. I think of those shoeboxes full of photographs in RC raj who had no idea that anybody would be interested in that uh they wouldn’t exist now. They would have been thrown away. So I’m glad we’re so proud of the fact that we’ve done that. But I think they become even more valuable pennell then then they as valuable as they were then. And getting across the misery that the racial situation uh was, was involved in the uh in the fifties and sixties. I think they’re even more powerful now and God knows, we thought we were going to be making this was going to be an old story uh in the fifties and sixties by the time we got to this point in history. But if anything, these photographs are even more important for that reason.

[0:43:00 Peniel] And finally, um uh huh Is the Briscoe center going to do more of this in terms of the exhibits? Because I know the exhibit was up for I guess almost an 18 month period. Are there gonna be any future plans

[0:43:15 Don] if we can ever get through the covid crosses? You know, we are as you know, our buildings closed and has been closed since last March. And uh, uh, we’re hoping that we can get our building reopened and the exhibits up. Yeah, but it’s our our the exhibits that we show at the Briscoe Center are all to show off the resources that we have for people to for teachers and researchers to use. We want people to know what we have and also to give people ideas about what they can write about. You know, what kind of things we have that they can use for their own research. But yeah, we that’s an integral part of our program. We we definitely plan to keep on doing. And we as you may know, we did another book that came out approximately the same time as this one called Flash of Light while the Fire, which is an archive I acquired out of Japan about archive of photographs. They were taken by japanese photographers after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And most of the photographs have never been published. They were suppressed by the Japanese government and by the american government. And so we’re gonna, that’s gonna be our next exhibit is an exhibit of those photographs are, they’re pretty horrific actually. But there’s a point to that and we’re going to try to open that if the crisis has passed us for the 76th anniversary of the bombings, uh, this coming august in 2021. So we’re going to continue to do this kind of work.

[0:44:43 Peniel] Well, that’s great. And we’re looking, we’re looking forward to it to see it both in person. But everyone now has a chance to get this book struggle for justice for decades of civil rights photography. We’ve been having a great conversation with Don Carlton, dr Don Carlton, who is the executive director of the Briscoe Center for American History and the JR part and chair in the Archives of American History at the University of texas at Austin. He’s the author of 11 books and the executive producer of two PBS documentaries, but the latest book, which everyone should pick up makes a great holiday gift. I have mine here, struggle for justice for decades of civil rights photography. Don thank you so much for joining us.

[0:45:22 Don] Oh, this was delightful. I appreciate it. Panel very much. Thank you.

[0:45:26 Peniel] Thanks for listening to this episode and you can check out related content on twitter at Peniel joseph, That’s P E N I E l j o s e p h and our website CSRD.LBJ.utexas.edu. And the Center for Study of Race and Democracy is on facebook as well. This podcast was recorded at the Liberal Arts Development Studio, at the College of Liberal Arts, at the University of texas at Austin. Th