Written by Caitlyn Gutierrez, Curatorial Intern
The Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens would like to present A Commemoration of the Civil Rights Movement: Photography from the High Museum of Art. This exhibit is composed of 22 photographic images captured over the course of the Civil Rights Movement, from 1956 – 1968. These photographs were taken by various contemporary photographers, including Bob Adelman, Danny Lyon, James Karales, and Steve Schapiro.
Organized by the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the exhibition brings these images together to document the events and people of the movement, from segregation to freedom. The earliest photographs are from 1956, and include an Unknown Photographer’s image of Rosa Parks Being Fingerprinted, Montgomery, Alabama, February 22, and Ernest Withers’ First Desegregated Bus Ride, Montgomery, AL., Dec..
Unknown Photographer, Rosa Parks Being Fingerprinted, Montgomery, Alabama, February 22, 1956, Gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta
Many of the photographs in the exhibition have captured the people who participated in the various marches and demonstrations that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement. This has worked to immortalize some of the brave men and women who peacefully pursued their freedom, through discrimination and, in some cases, violent attacks upon themselves. One of these incidents, the police attack on young demonstrators in Kelly Ingram Park, was documented in a photograph by Bob Adelman on May 3, 1963.
Although some of the people in the images remain anonymous, there is also a great deal of pictures in the exhibition that hold familiar and well known faces in their frame. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a few of the exhibition images, along with other activists including Stokeley Carmichael, Andrew Young, John Lewis, and Fannie Lou Hamer.
Steve Schapiro, Andrew Young, Martin Luther King Jr., and John Lewis, Selma, Alabama, 1965, Gelatin silver print, High Museum of Art, Atlanta
This exhibition will be held in the Milner Gallery from February 28 to November 2, 2014.