Stirring and triumphant photographs evoke the heady days of the Civil Rights' Movement when America faced its worst nightmare and the Dream won. Fuelled by the powerful imagery in "Mine Eyes Have Seen", we take a rollercoaster ride, peering through the eyes of "LIFE" photographer Bob Adelman as America struggles. We are both seared and uplifted by unforgettable photographs of America's dramatic journey through its still aching racial conflicts. Incredibly, only a generation ago, public signs shamefully separated people according to their skin colour. Selfless activists from all walks of life rallied under inspired leaders to dismantle those last vestiges of slavery.Picture by picture, we see racial barriers fall confronted with moral outrage and public scrutiny. In some of the most riveting images we are reminded that racism was not restricted to one section of the nation. Attuned to the vitality and expressiveness of African American culture, we see evocative and penetrating portraits of artists and writers as diverse as the Quilters of Gees Bend, Ralph Ellison, Sidney Poitier, James Baldwin, and Miles Davis.
Together with the Black Church, the extraordinary creativity of artists and ordinary folk were formidable resources from which the Movement drew its strength and its inventiveness. Concluding on a note of celebration, the photographs reveal ever-increasing signs of racial reconciliation.
Sure, these are familiar images if you've ever studied any American history. Adelman's photography is worth another look, though, to see how he captured the people of the civil rights movement in motion.
I recently spoke with Adelman about his work for The Associated Press:
MIAMI BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Flipping through a stack of color images he shot during a 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., photographer Bob Adelman is casual about the history they represent.
He pauses at the image of a group of people with clasped hands raised in victory at a Montgomery, Ala., cab stand, where people had gathered during the city's long bus boycott a decade earlier, and calls them "real King fans." Pointing to the second floor of the Alabama Capitol, behind a line of green-helmeted troops, he chuckles as he remembers, "Gov. Wallace was hiding behind the curtains up there."
Then there's the man with his fist raised in mid-speech, whom he calls "Doc" -- better known as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Now they seem like momentous events. At the time, they were covered in the back pages of newspapers, for the most part. The only time blacks appeared in newspapers at that time was when there was violence," Adelman said.
Read more at: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/exhibit-shows-adelmans-civil-rights-era-photos
