This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement

Part One: Black Life

28 Part One: Black Life Grassroots organizing across the “Black Belt” best describes the 1960s Southern Freedom Movement. It was dangerous work punctuated by murder. The Black Belt curves through hundreds of counties from Maryland to Texas. In many, black people are a majority. It still contains some of America’s poorest counties, like Quitman County in Mississippi where a third of the population lives below the poverty line. In the 1960s the county’s average annual per family income was only one thousand dollars. Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, Martin Luther King’s good friend and SCLC associate, tells of a 1966 visit they made to a school there. A teacher they were visiting needed to feed her students and excused herself: “It’s lunchtime,” she explained. “We watched as she brought out a box of crackers and a brown bag filled with apples; then she went around to each desk and gave each child a stack of four or five crackers and a quarter of an apple. “‘That’s all they get,’ I whispered.” King turned to his friend, nodding his head. “And I saw that his eyes were full of tears.” Everywhere, black life was harsh and disempowered. And everywhere , oppressive laws imposed racial discrimination and segregation. Violence was regularly used to enforce white supremacy. Nonetheless, deprivation, terror, and fear did not begin to describe or define black community life. There was love and laughter and play and family and strength and pride; and most significantly, against all odds, determination to make life better. These communities were the heartland of the Southern Freedom Movement. 29 Strength where you might least expect it was often encountered—as in the face of this rural Alabama man—reflecting vitality and dignity in a society trying to strip it away. Bob Fitch, Alabama, 1965 30 31 left A Mississippi Delta farmer shows photographer Tamio Wakayama internal organs that will be his family’s dinner. “I had the feeling,” Wakayama recalled, “of lives blending seamlessly with the black soil of the cotton fields, creating a visual and organic unity.” Tamio Wakayama, Mississippi Delta, 1964 below Children improvise a playground in the Child Development Group of Mississippi, one of the nation’s first Head Start programs. Bob Fletcher, Mississippi, 1965 32 below Resourcefulness was essential for survival in the cash-poor communities of the Black Belt— vegetable gardens, hogs rooting in the yard, or fish from a nearby pond provided food for the table. Bob Fletcher, Mississippi Delta, 1965 right Laughter, often loud and generous like that coming from this rural Alabama woman on her front porch, punctuated everyday life. Bob Fitch, Alabama, 1965 34 below Youthful energy, as with this boy proudly demonstrating his vigor on the streets of Atlanta, was not crushed by segregation’s viciousness. Tamio Wakayama, Atlanta, Georgia, 1963 right The sister of this woman died when her Birmingham house burned due to late arrival of the fire department. Black neighborhoods were notoriously neglected. Bob Fitch, Birmingham, Alabama, 1965 36 37 left The carefully lettered sign supports a boycott of merchants who refused to hire blacks in the small town of Grenada, Mississippi, where half the population was black. Bob Fitch, Grenada, Mississippi, 1966 below In 1965, a small, defiant group of sharecroppers began demanding a fair wage and went on strike, giving birth to the Mississippi Freedom Labor Union. Bob Fletcher, Mississippi Delta, 1965 38 39 left Alabama man shows a head wound he received from a beating by the Klan. Bob Fitch, Alabama, 1965 below “More than poverty,” explained the photographer, “I saw harmony between the sharecropper’s shack, the outhouse, and the black soil. It began my long love affair with that land and its people.” Tamio Wakayama, Mississippi Delta, 1964 40 41 left Photographer Maria Varela recalled: “We organized, traveling winter-ravaged country roads, going house to house, and sometimes no one would open the door.” Maria Varela, Rosedale, Mississippi, 1966 below Blues fertilized Delta life. Jamie Sims, blind from birth and subject to a poverty that left him few options, spent much of his life on his front porch, playing guitar. Matt Herron, Valley View, Mississippi, 1964 42 43 left The Child Development Group of Mississippi (CDGM) was one of the nation’s first Head Start programs. Here at...