>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington DC.
[silence]
>> PAM JACKSON: Good afternoon.
Welcome, I'm Pam Jackson.
I'm the Director of the
Center for the Book.
We're here at the Library of
Congress as part of the national
and international outreach unit.
And we welcome you here to
this afternoon's book talk.
We're very excited to share
our passion and interest
in promoting a culture
of reading and literacy.
And today's book talk and
today's author and our partnership
with the research reading
room that we have
as a co-sponsor is
really exciting for us.
So, thank you.
I'll start just with a little
bit about the Library of Congress
that we are the nation's
first cultural institution
and it's our mission to
provide a very rich, diverse
and enduring source of knowledge.
And we do so with a particular
purpose, which is to have the nation
and the world rely on our
collections and the objects
and the books and the music and the
movies and everything that we have
to stimulate and inspire
intellectual creativity
and productivity.
And at the Center for the Book,
which includes the Young
Readers Center and Poetry
and Literature Center, we are
focused on promoting books
and libraries, reading and
literacy, poetry and literature
for the purpose of engaging and
supporting an informed society.
We like to talk about being
the defenders of democracy
because we know that without
literacy, democracies can't stand.
And we like to do so
fulfilling on partnerships
with really exciting
people and exciting books
and exciting authors,
which we have today.
So, as part of our mission, we
have affiliates around the country.
There's a Center for the Book
in every state and the District
of Columbia and the Virgin Islands.
And we also have a network
of partners promote reading
and literacy promotion, nonprofit
organizations around the region,
who partner with us and
affiliate with us in a variety
of programs and initiatives.
Finally, the Center for the Book is
the administrator for the Library
of Congress literacy awards program,
where we offer prizes in excess
of $200,000 to organizations
to support
and empower their literacy
promotion work.
And we do invite you today and
those watching us at the webcast,
visit us at read.gov/literacyawards
to learn more about that program,
because the applications
are circulating now
and that period closes
at the end of March.
But, to focus on what
we're here for,
I mentioned that folks
are watching online,
so we are webcasting today's
event and we want to let you know
that if you're interacting in
the Q&A portion of our talk
that you are being
recorded and let you know
that you become a part
of the webcast.
We also invite you at this time
to just take a look and make sure
that your mobile devices are
turned on to silent or vibrating.
And we also can remind
you that or let you know
that read.gov is the place where
you find more than 250 talks
and author experiences like this
one that we're having today.
Finally, as one last housekeeping,
today's author is available
for book signing and the books are
available on sale outside the door,
so please make sure you
take time to get your copy.
This is a really remarkable
set of works and information
and presentation that I'm just
really moved and inspired by.
So, thank you.
Now, the chief criterion for
deciding about books and authors
for the Books & Beyond series
that is hosted by the Center
for the Book is that we're
focused on books that are authored
about the Library of Congress,
published by the Library
of Congress, or sourced using the
Library of Congress collections.
We care deeply that the
public know what kind
of collections we have available,
what kind of rich resources
people can create as a result
of spending time in our
research and reading rooms.
And we definitely have that
to share with you today.
So, today's talk I mentioned is
co-sponsored and we have two,
the Daniel A.P. Murray Association
here at the Library of Congress
and also the Prints & Photographs
Division of the Library of Congress,
are our co-sponsors for
today's talk and here
to introduce the author is Beverly
Brannan and who's the curator
of photography in the Library's
Prints & Photograph division.
Now her work in photojournalism
began in 1974 when she was hired
to catalog the Look magazine photo
collection over five million items.
She's co-curated Documenting
America and the overview
of the Farm Security
Administration collection.
That includes more than 170,000
photographs documenting the Great
Depression and America's
entry into World War II.
Beverly has written
about the FSA photographs
in both English and French.
And in 1995, she co-curated
the Library exhibition,
"Women Come to the Front:
Journalists, Photographers
and Broadcasters during
World War II."
So, Beverly, I just
like to acknowledge you
for your extraordinary, personal
scholarship and creation is here
at the Library and with your
works, and to acknowledge you
as a great partner to
the Center for the Book
and an extraordinary visionary
in the work that we do
in serving the public and
promoting the Library's collections.
So, if you would join us
to introduce this author,
I'd thank you very much.
Thank you for being here.
[applause]
>> BEVERLY BRANNAN: I feel honored.
The Library's documentation
of racial issues
in the United States is so vast
that a single book can only
suggest how extensive the record is.
Dr. Speltz's book, "North of Dixie:
Civil Rights Photography Beyond
the South," presents a selection
of graphic images dating from the
1930s to the 1970s, with a reference
to 2014 to indicate that this is an
ongoing situation in this country.
This presentation acquaints a new
generation and reminds an older one
of this aspect of our past.
Dr. Speltz's writings provide
context for the images.
A New York Times blurb for the
cover of the book said that,
"Dr. Speltz's work is needed because
standard histories have focused
on racial segregation in the
South as though it did not exist
in other parts of the
United States."
Also, journalism at the
time failed to represent
that racism extended
throughout the country
and that this book brings
together some of the documentation
of the pervasiveness of
racism in the entire nation.
Mark Speltz is an author and public
historian who researches and writes
about the civil rights
era photography,
vernacular architecture, and
Wisconsin culture and history.
He's worked as a senior historian
at American Girl in Madison,
Wisconsin for the past 17 years
and will be joining the Wells Fargo
Family and Business History Center
in San Francisco next month.
This, his third book,
"North of Dixie:
Civil Rights Photographs Beyond
the South," was published
by the J. Paul Getty Museum in
Los Angeles in November 2016.
His book credits some of the
images to the Library of Congress
for which we are very pleased.
So, Dr. Speltz, please tell
us more about your book.
[applause]
>> MARK SPELTZ: Hello everybody.
>> AUDIENCE: Good afternoon.
>> MARK SPELTZ: Good afternoon.
Thank you, Pam, for that
lovely introduction.
Beverly, thank you so much for that
and for all the work that you do
in helping the Prints &
Photographs collection be a resource
for people like me.
Thank you, Guy and
everybody on your team
for making this event part
of Black History Month.
I'm really honored to be here
and it's so nice to see you
and the crowd and a
few familiar faces.
Thank you for coming.
I'm so excited to tell
you about North of Dixie.
I worked on it for truly 10 years,
but in the last four or five,
it's almost consumed my life.
So, to be able to share something
with people is a wonderful feeling,
but I'm not going to read it to you.
I'm not going to show
you every photograph.
I want you to pick it up and feel
its weight and let your eyes linger
over the photographs and take
in the meaning, read the quotes,
and I want you to think about civil
rights photography a little bit
different after today and
after reading the book.
So, I'm going to share some of my
favorite photos, tell a few stories
about its development,
highlight, of course,
the Library of Congress images
in the book and the connections
and my research experience here.
And then we'll have plenty
of time for questions
and a signing afterwards
just outside at the door.
So, I've been deeply
immersed in this world
of civil rights photography
for over a decade.
And every conversation since then
began with, "Why did you think
about civil rights
in the North only?
Or why just north of Dixie?"
And it all started with these
two photographs in 2007.
I was a graduate student in
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
in a visual culture
and photography class.
The assignment was, select
a photograph and read it.
Try to interpret it as a source.
Tell us what stories it holds.
Who's in it?
What we can learn from it?
And I knew immediately
I wanted to look
at civil rights era photography.
I've always been deeply moved
by it, by the compelling images
that I saw as a student growing up.
So, I went to the Wisconsin
Historical Society and began to look
at photographs from
Little Rock, Arkansas,
Daisy Bates' personal collection.
Snapshots from Freedom Summer, 1964,
Mississippi-never been
published before.
Then I, also, of course,
saw photos like the one
on the left that are truly iconic.
Jackson, Mississippi, a
Woolworth sit-in, 1963.
This one is used in history books,
children's textbooks, documentaries
and it captures everything we know
about civil rights era photography.
It accentuates danger, violence,
what the nonviolent activists faced,
a sense of intimidation,
but they raised awareness
and generated sympathy
for the movement,
so they played an important role
in the civil rights movement.
The picture on the
right, I looked at,
but I had no idea how
to interpret that.
Sort of an urban scene,
interracial group marching through,
a police officer staring
straight into the camera's eye.
Well, 2007 was the 40th anniversary
of when that photo was taken.
It was taken on the second night
of 200 straight nights of marching
for open housing in Milwaukee.
So, 200 straight nights would take
you through a Wisconsin winter.
I'd call that dedication, but I
didn't know how to interpret that.
I didn't know anything about the
movement outside of the south.
Didn't know anything
about it in Milwaukee.
I really had to begin
to learn about it
and that's how this project began.
My advisor said, "People
have written extensively
about the one on the left.
The one on the right, not
many people have looked at."
Think about that.
These were the types of
photos I was familiar with.
And when I say the words civil
rights movement, they're the types
of images that pop into your mind.
Perhaps you've seen them yourself.
They're used over and over again.
They're downright famous and
iconic and they're important.
There were important moments.
They document important
speeches, confrontations.
So, I knew I need to understand how
they came about, why they matter,
who took them, and how
they've influenced how we think
of the civil rights movement today.
The one on the bottom left
taken by Charles Moore
for Life magazine, I had seen that.
What I didn't understand was
the context behind the photo,
what it documented,
how it came to be.
Dr. King and the SCLC were hoping
for photographs like
this in Birmingham.
They wanted to confront
city leaders,
city commissioner Bull
Connor to overreact,
to create a dramatic scene like this
that could end up on the front page
of the newspaper, international
newspapers,
and the nightly news,
and shock Americans.
Call attention to what
was happening.
Put pressure on Birmingham to
help begin desegregating the city.
And it did help.
As I continue to learn about these
iconic photographs, I found very few
from the North and the West.
And I knew that these images
only told a part of the story.
The most iconic pics are usually
emphasizing southern violence,
the southern movement,
brutalized black bodies,
charismatic male leaders.
They overlook and make invisible
the actions of ordinary Americans.
So, I came to understand
what was being left out
and that there was a need for
a book like North of Dixie.
North of Dixie is a small
effort to shift this perspective
to recast the visual narrative.
It's a visual exploration of
the movement beyond the South,
the best known individuals,
and the most iconic locations.
The goal of the book is to
make visible lesser-known
but equally inspiring stories from
L.A. to Harlem, from coast to coast.
The selection of a hundred
photographs from the late '30s
to the '70s capture the breadth
of the movement and the diversity
of issues that activists
challenged in their communities.
So, everybody asks, "How did
you find all of the photographs?
And did you ...
How'd you select them?"
Well, I began by searching
for online galleries,
working through the Library
of Congress' website,
going through every photograph book
I could find from the movement.
Then I began reaching out to
photo archives, photographers,
collections, and reading widely
about the movement in cities
like St. Louis, Chicago,
Philadelphia, and Seattle.
I visited the Chicago
History Museum.
Worked with curators
at the Schaumburg,
at the New York Public
Library in Harlem.
I went out to the Getty and looked
at the top left photographers
collection Charles Brittin.
Charles Brittin was a CORE
photographer with the Congress
of Racial Equality in
LA among other things.
As you can see, those
are context sheets
and you can see markings
in red grease pencils.
It allowed me to get inside of a
photographer's collection rather
than seeing the three most popular
photographs that were published.
So, I was able to understand
the ones he liked,
where he would maybe
crop something out.
The papers, his personal papers,
allowed me to see the ephemera,
the pamphlets, the booklets.
So, how CORE used his photography,
what newspapers published his works.
So, it was more than
just an image or two.
It was really understanding,
providing a lens
into how an activist photographer
within an organization worked.
In the end, I collaborated with
photographers nationwide- some
who worked in the North and
the South like Bob Adelman,
who recently passed away.
He sent thousands of
unpublished works from cities,
about 15 different cities in
the North where he worked.
So, I got to pick through those.
And believe me, looking through
2,000 photos to find the seven
that I can use in a book
is really difficult work.
It's heartbreaking actually.
I was allowed to look through
Gordon Parks' unpublished works
with his foundation, the images
from Life magazine from his essays,
and selected two for the book.
So, that was a true joy.
In the end, we included 50
different photographers.
Out of a hundred photographs,
50 different photographers.
Not all art museum-quality work.
Some are photojournalists,
activists, archivists, and amateurs,
and even police photographers.
But, of course, my most favorite
research trip of all was to here,
the Prints and Photographs reading
room at the Library of Congress.
I was lucky to spend two full days,
which is, of course, not enough,
but two full days for a
researcher is a lot of time.
It's an incredible resource.
After scouring the website and
materials available from outside
of the building and working
with the archivist in advance
to make sure I was going to have
the most efficient research trip
possible, I came and I began
to hold those prints in my hand
and flip them over and read
the captions, find out whether
or not they were used,
who took them.
Suddenly, I had access to
all of these lesser-known,
rarely published, if at all, images.
The images we haven't seen before.
I spent hours in the U.S. News and
World Report magazine collection,
the New York World Tribune
and Sun newspaper morgue.
I was stunned to hold these
contact sheets and pore over them,
looking for new stories, new
angles, different insights.
I also located crucial
selections from the Library
of Congress' NAACP visual
materials collection.
There are so many photographs
that were collected.
And I don't know how they came
in, but there are snapshots
that people took and then
might've loaned to the NAACP.
They were press photographs,
studio photographs.
Some had captions.
Some had nothing, but it's
an incredible collection.
I can remember cranking through them
on the microfilm and it was the end
of the day of that my
eyes were hurting so bad.
You know and you press
one more photocopy
and you go home barely knowing
what you have and then the joy
to see those photographs
come in crystal clear.
And I'll show a few
on another slide.
But, this one is one that I
found from 1942 and it's one
of the earliest and the
strongest photographs in the book.
You can see what the St. Louis
NAACP was concerned with-
stopping lynching, victory at home,
victory against racism at home,
victory for democracy abroad.
And then the more famous
1936 photo on the right.
You can tell that racial violence
nationwide was clearly an issue.
These were among the
strongest photos in the book
and I couldn't imagine
North of Dixie without them.
They exposed the routes
of the activism
and they're a treasure to have.
My favorite collection, and this
was not planned at the Library
of Congress, was the
Look magazine collection.
It's a true gem.
How many people remember
paging through Look magazine?
All right.
It's just like Life- large format,
glossy pages, color photography.
There was strong coverage
of the northern movement,
perhaps most memorably of Selma.
But, Look also covered
discrimination in the North.
Once I found an article in
the magazine or in the index,
I would set that aside and know that
there would be 15, 20 photographs
for each article that was never
used, sometimes even more.
But, one of the best ones that I
came across filled an entire page
and a half in the magazine and
it was taken by Bob Adelman
in the Brooklyn neighborhood
of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
And he said it captured
for him what it was
like to live in that neighborhood.
The whole article was what the
different residents face whether it
was in the schools
or working nearby,
paying high-priced rent,
dilapidated housing.
And the photographs was
one of his favorites.
The funniest story he told me ...
I can still remember sitting in my
office talking to him on the phone
and he said, "You know that ...
That photograph was
stolen by the Russians
and it was printed in Pravda."
I was just kind of
write that down, like,
another story that a
photographer will tell.
Well, sure enough, I was able
to track it down in Pravda.
Couldn't read anything on the page.
Couldn't tell you how I found it,
because it was word searching to get
to it, and I eventually found it.
I sent that to him
and he was so pleased
to corroborate a story he's
been telling all these years.
And you have to remember, this
is a point in American history
where we were very concerned.
We were wondering and worrying about
what the Russians thought of us.
So, a picture like this
was in stark contrast
to what we were promoting is
being the strongest democracy
in the world.
By now, you're probably wondering,
"Well, what are differences
between the photos in
the North and the South?"
And I'm embarrassed to say,
after four years of working
on this, there really isn't.
I was not able to come up
with a really great definition
of how they different.
And sadly, they're the
same kinds of photos.
It's just how they were used.
There was no shortage of dramatic
confrontations, racist actions
or inspiring moments,
speeches and marches.
The northern media preferred to
downplay and bury local concerns.
They cast them aside in favor
of covering heroic
nonviolent southern protests.
But, when northern movements and
stories of local activism blew up
and deserved to be
on the front page,
they could no longer be ignored.
Photo editors had that same
insatiable appetite to use violent,
active, dramatic scenes
on the front page.
Yet when they covered them or
wrote about them, there was never
that same moral clarity when
they were condemning the South.
That sense of conviction
was not there.
So, the photos and many
of the stories were
largely forgotten outside
of the cities in which
they happened.
The southern stories fit
a comfortable storyline.
They were easier to
frame, point a finger.
It was always easier
to shift the blame.
But, seeing northern photos of
endless marches and burning crosses
or kids in Chicago waving
Confederate flags complicates how we
remember the civil rights movement.
The North was not the
racially benevolent place
that our historical
imagination suggest.
It was not the northern promise
land that most hoped it would be.
Believe it's critically important
to bring these northern
stories into view.
Dr. King often reminded people,
"America's racial issue was not a
sectional but a national problem."
Yet, northern activism is absent
in the way we characterize,
teach and remember the era.
So, if we want to understand
the full story of one
of the most important social
movements of the 20th century,
we can't just see half the story.
Racism and discrimination were often
more hidden and subtle in the North.
There were not signs for separate
drinking fountains, buses.
Photographers had to work hard to
make this discrimination visible.
You had to march into a
white Chicago neighborhood
to call attention to the issue
like on the left, or you had to lay
down under a steam
shovel in Cleveland
to slow school constructions that
would further segregation there.
People struggled against
pervasive forms of discrimination
like housing segregation,
redlining, racial steering,
neighborhood boundaries
protected by force.
The top right photograph is from
the Look magazine collection.
And this family spent every Sunday
touring the edges of Philadelphia
where they could find housing.
And this particular image shows them
looking at a house that they fell
in love with, but also
realizing that it was
in a whites-only section.
The article was called "Jim Crow
Northern Style" and ran in 1956.
One of the benefits of looking
beyond the most well-known stories
is we're better able to identify
and appreciate lesser-known
grassroots movements
that were conceived of, built by,
and waged locally by
ordinary Americans.
We see a woman here kneeling on her
protest sign to block a dump truck
at a construction site in Brooklyn
that refuse to hire black workers.
We see activism and agency.
We see men and women
in San Francisco
in 1955 picketing a cab company that
wouldn't hire a single black driver.
This is one of those
photographs that I came
across in the NAACP collection.
And the photocopy I made
was sort of rough-looking.
I had no idea how clear
it would come through.
When it did, it was just gorgeous.
I mean, you could see the details
of the women holding the signs
with their white gloves on,
how well-dressed they are
and you couldn't see any of that.
This photo's so strong
that it's been used in most
of the press accounts and it's
probably the strongest image
in the press pool.
And I think it really stops
people in their tracks.
With these photographs,
we see so much more
than brutalized black
bodies and violence.
We see people making change, not
waiting for it to come to them.
That agency is important and I
think young people today can see
that they weren't waiting
for Dr. King to come
to their city to lead the movement.
They were there ready to lead.
Average citizens refused to wait.
They asked what they could
do to make America better.
We also see images of proud and
determined youth and active,
engaged citizens in the North.
Both of these images come
from the Library of Congress.
The one on the left is from
1957 and went unpublished.
Blacks were engaged in local
politics, even working at the poles.
This picture stands in stark
contrast to the scene in the South
where blacks were shut out
off the political process.
The image on the right
depicts a successful sit-in
or as the typed caption
notes at the top,
"A sit-down in an Oklahoma
city drug store."
Most Americans are vaguely aware
of the southern sit-in movement
that started in Greensboro,
North Carolina in 1960.
In fact, you see a section
of the lunch counter right
here in D.C. and the stools.
But, few know about earlier
sit-ins such as 1942, Chicago,
one's in Baltimore;
Wichita, Kansas, in 1958.
In fact, the 1958 Wichita ones
are what inspired this group
in Oklahoma City.
Clara Luper was an NAACP leader
there who led kids as young as eight
up to 16 into the desegregation
over a period
of about four or five years there.
They did about 20 different
places in Oklahoma City,
yet very few people know that.
So, the stories and the views and
so much more that are left out of
that traditional narrative
that we tell every February,
that we tell in grade school.
There are more reasons to celebrate,
more things to think about,
harder questions to
ask, and it's important
to re-examine what we think we know.
A lot of the pictures
upend long held assumptions
about the movement
and turbulent era.
Most popular accounts of the
movements suggest that the struggle
in the civil rights movement came
north only when Dr. King came
to Chicago in '66 to
march, to end the slums.
The story then in those
books continues
that the movement floundered
in the urban concrete amidst
fire, rebellion, black power.
That's the beginning and
the ending of the movement
in the North in a traditional story.
In reality, what historians have
shown and what the photographs
in "North of Dixie"
illustrate is that the routes
of the campaigns nationwide reach
much further back often before World
War II.
The top right picture is taken in
Chicago and it's a protest outside
of a roller-skating rink in an
African-American neighborhood.
The skating rink was
called White City
and blacks were not
allowed to skate there.
So, CORE, the Congress of Racial
Equality, which was founded there
in about 1942 took up the cause
and picketed every Saturday night.
And they didn't make too
much of a dent in business
until they began to, they
innovated and began to do stand-ins
where they block the ticket booth
on the busiest night of the week.
And they were losing
more and more business.
But, what really cracked
the straw here
and made a difference was
they recruited volunteers
that had military service.
CORE recruited members to come
out, hold signs that said,
"The draft boards did not exclude
Negros and wear their uniforms."
And that began to make a big
difference, because the individuals
who fought for democracy abroad, yet
couldn't skate in their own backyard
and were enduring a
second-class citizenship,
that made a huge difference.
And they ultimately desegregated
it within a series of months.
Now the picture on the left
shows how photography made issues
that weren't always visible.
From the street, visible.
In this particular case, a member
of the NAACP with his arm band
on is standing near it, a janitor or
a resident pointing to the ceiling,
to the huge plaster
piece that had fallen.
There's leaky pipes above
that caused that to fall.
And often these landed on
men, women and children
who lived in the residences.
And you would see them in the black
newspapers wearing a big bandage
with another story about this.
"Aren't you sick of falling plaster?
We sure are," the headlines
would say,
or they would say,
"Rats as big as cats.
Holes in the kitchens where
rats could come and go."
These conditions inside
of the living residences
in dilapidated housing, overpriced
by landlords, preying on families
that couldn't move out
of the neighborhood.
So, these photographs
made it visible.
And I think that the
pictures helped challenge
for the average reader the
assumptions that demonstrations,
riots, and rebellions, they
didn't come out of nowhere.
They didn't explode on their own.
They were often decades
in the making.
And the issues stacking up like
unsafe housing, poor city services,
unequal schools, overzealous
policing-
these are protests to inaction.
Complacency in silence.
So, the escalating tactics
through the decades,
the more determined
protests they call attention
to the issues look different when
you see 20, 30 years of photographs
of protests before a
riot or a rebellion.
One of the chapters focuses
on activist photographers.
And one of the earliest
and best-known activist
photographers is Danny Lyon
who took the photograph
on the top left.
He was a college kid
from U of Chicago,
who brought his camera south ...
Southern Illinois, I should
say Cayro to a Snick protest.
On the poster on the far left,
you can see congressman
John Lewis kneeling.
Danny took this ...
This was his first
protest photograph ...
First protest he went to.
A group of high school age kids
were protesting at a city pool
that wouldn't let them swim
there, African-American kids.
They were forced to
often swim in the rivers.
And every year or two
that somebody would die
and this issue would boil up again.
And Snick had admired
their bravery and strength.
They had been beaten
with pipes and arrested.
They were doing, I
think, a hunger strike.
And they went down to support.
This photograph tells that story,
but it also captures Snick's
emerging sense of leadership.
They were a youthful group.
They had men and women.
They weren't putting forth
one charismatic male leader.
So, they used this
photograph and this poster,
as you can see the
words at the bottom
and their name, to advertise that.
They also innovated by making it
into a poster that they could sell
and they printed 10,000
copies at a dollar a piece.
So, they began to use
photography in a multitude of ways.
And the activist photographer
played important roles,
but it also inspired
other photographers
such as Bruce Hartford
down on the left.
He was involved in
a group called NVAC,
Nonviolent Action Committee,
in Los Angeles.
And the fuzzy little photo
on the left captures
their guerilla tactics.
What they would do is
put on their placards,
wear them around their neck.
And in this case, it says, "Don't
buy Van De Kamp's bakery products."
So, they were protesting this
baking company that was alleged
for not hiring African-Americans
at their factories.
And they would march into the
grocery store singing freedom songs,
throwing pamphlets out and
calling attention to the issue.
They would take all the baking goods
off of the shelves and put them
in those carts and then push
them up to the checkout counter
and just walk out and create a stir.
Then they would go to the next door
and do a similar thing
and the next door ...
Of course, the police
eventually caught up to them.
So, it wasn't the strongest tactic.
What he was trying to tell me is
they would use these photographs
on their brochures.
As you can see the next image over,
they were doing a sip-in
at a coffee shop.
He knew by watching Snick and others
that photography meant immediacy.
It helped them dramatize the issues.
And that's how they
wanted to use it.
He was not a professional
photographer.
He carried a little Brownie camera
that he had from when he was a kid
and snapped these little pictures,
but they knew that they helped.
The other very powerful
photograph comes from Detroit,
from a massive collection
of Detroit NAACP photographs
at Wayne State University.
Detroit's NAACP was the
largest branch in the nation.
They had a strong black middle
class because of the auto industry
and had more members
than anywhere else.
And they came up against school
and equalities, textbook issues,
hiring discrimination, and
of course, police brutality.
This picture was taken by
the director or a volunteer
and then sent to newspapers-
black and white.
It helped make a very
invisible issue.
And I say "invisible," because in
Detroit, between 1956 and 1960,
the Detroit NACCP investigated
150 different allegations
of police brutality.
And over one-third
happened in the privacy
of a precinct office
away from the public eye.
They weren't recorded
as they are now.
So, they used the camera
to make that visible,
to provide evidence of a beating.
And of course, they sent it to
the black and the white presses.
The black press would occasionally
run a photo with this story,
but the white press
never covered the issue.
The fourth and final chapter
in North of Dixie is built
around the concept of surveillance
and this is an issue that's not
been written about much in relation
to the civil rights movement.
So, I was very happy to be able
to find some photos and cover it.
The camera turned out to be an
incredibly powerful weapon during
the civil rights movement
as I've kind of showed
and others have written about, but
it was also turned around and used
against the movement
by law enforcement.
You can look at beautiful civil
rights marches and photographs
and exhibitions, and once
in a while, along the way,
you'll see a police photographer
in full uniform standing along
a dusty road snapping pictures.
And rarely, do we stop and think
about what or why they were doing.
In this particular case, I found the
gentleman on the top right in Cayro,
Illinois, Illinois state
highway patrol documenting the
marchers there.
Often times they were practical-
how many people are out?
What are the routes that they took?
How can we prepare in the future to
better contain or control a protest?
But, more often than not,
they were for surveillance.
The top left photograph was taken
in Seattle by a police photographer,
but I didn't know that at first.
I just saw a really great
open housing protest.
And when I went to the Seattle
Municipal Archives' website
and looked at two dozen
of these photographs,
I began to recognize a theme.
People would kind of
cover their face
or they would put a peace sign up.
And then there was at the last
of the images one little
brave 10-year-old boy
who was his tongue out
at the photographer.
And it hit me finally that they
did not like that photographer.
They didn't want to be photographed.
Through the help of a incredible
archivist there who kept digging
for me, she found a document
related to these photos sent
by Sergeant Noble who took
them delivered to the mayor,
to the mayor of the whole city,
detailing who was the march,
what their license plates
were, how long it lasted,
how many pictures they took,
and all of that information.
Others were much more secretive
like the Chicago Red Squad.
There were red squads in most
major metropolitan areas,
but they would photograph
and document
and build surveillance files on
anybody deemed against the state-
protest groups, black power
groups, communists, gangs.
And what I found fascinating
about when I looked
through their collections is
there would be a number one next
to somebody and their
name on the back,
which I've included one
of those in the book.
This massive collection was
used against different groups.
When CORE march was part
of the school boycott,
reporters were tipped off in advance
who was against this and that
and they were covering it.
Police were able to arrest
and use it against them.
The contact sheets on the
bottom left come from New York.
The three ...
I know you can't see them.
The three are from Selma ...
Excuse me ...
A protest in New York related to
the Selma marches and beatings.
And the police were there
just kind of documenting,
monitoring who was there.
The next ones over are from
the Black Panther rally.
And these ones really struck me
because one photographer
took six rolls of film
of one Black Panther
rally in one city related
to one issue on one single day.
So, give me a feel for the size,
the massive amount of surveillance,
imagery that was taken
that exists out there.
It is hard to get your hands on.
Most groups do not
want to give it up.
These collections came about
through lawsuits and are protected.
But, I think that it's an
important way to understand
that the camera was both a weapon
for the movement and against it,
and there's a lot to be learned, and
it's very relevant today, of course.
So, my last slide ...
As you might imagine working
on a book during the past two,
three years has been an
incredibly powerful time.
And with each issue, each
tragic police killing,
each college protest, it became more
and more relevant,
more and more timely.
And with each photograph
or gesture coming
up in the news, we were able to ...
You were able to sort of
harken back to an earlier time
to visual imagery you've
seen before.
And it became apparent with the
cover that is incredibly powerful
from 1967 in Newark, taken
by the first black photographer
for the New York Times.
That it was powerful then.
But then with the hands-up gesture,
it became even more relevant now.
And the photographs that we
see now, whether they come
across our cellphones, or
actually printed in a newspaper,
are going to harken
back their conversation.
And then we begin to wonder which
ones are going to be the images
that will be iconic
50 years from now?
Which images will tell the story?
Which handful will be used
to represent our time?
One of the things I like to
ponder and I'd love to hear kind
of what the Library of Congress
is doing with digital images
that might be coming in,
because it's a huge challenge.
But, there are efforts to preserve
tweets, digital media from Ferguson,
from Baltimore, and from St. Paul.
But, will we be able to
find them 50 years from now
if somebody wants to do a book?
It's kind of a scary time.
I worry about my own digital media.
What will happen with the way
we're preserving things now?
But I do want to end with one
quote in the preface that speaks
to the time that we're in.
I think when the wonderful historian
and photographer, Deb Willis,
who wrote the preface, sent it to
us, I can still remember where I was
when I read it and
how moving it was.
I don't know how she did it, how
she picked it, but she chose words
from James Baldwin
who wrote in 1961,
"Bobby Kennedy recently made me the
soul-stirring promise that one day,
30 years if I'm lucky,
I can be president too.
It never entered into this boy's
mind that perhaps I don't wanna.
What really exercises my mind
is not this hypothetical day
on which some other Negro first will
become the first Negro president.
What I'm really curious
is just what kind
of country will he be president of?"
Thank you.
[applause]
>> MARK SPELTZ: Welcome any
questions and if you don't want
to be recorded, I understand.
There will be plenty
of time afterwards.
Yes.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: (inaudible)
>> MARK SPELTZ: Sure.
In all honesty, I was searching for
anything I could get my hands on.
Chicago, for example, in order
to even view the Chicago
Red Squad collection,
you need to sign an affidavit
and then when you go,
you can look through them.
But, in order to publish any
of them, you need permission
from the person in the photograph.
Or if they've passed away, you
need permission from their family.
So I used four of them and
it took probably two months
to get all of those permissions.
Just myself and of course that
was their verbal permission
and then the publisher
reached out to them as well
to confirm that in writing.
But, that was an incredible
challenge.
Other places, the New York
City municipal archives,
somehow they got that collection.
The problem there was they were
in the process of taking them
from negatives and scanning them.
So they were they just inching
their way along through the years.
Some they said, "well they're
not indexed in any way.
They're by date so can you send
us what you are interested in?"
So, at that point I had to think,
ok, what were the major protests
or events that the police might
have been paying attention to?
So, I kind of worked that
out and sent them that list.
And then they went through and
found whatever they could find.
And I found a really nice archivist
who digitized them and sent them
to me and then I asked a few
questions here and there.
But, it's amazing what they have.
In fact, one of them was
around the 1964 Harlem riots
and they had a picture of the police
officer who shot the young boy
which kind of started it all.
They actually scanned
and sent me pictures
from the morgue of the young man.
It was incredible stuff that exists.
So, there's a lot to be
done with that angle still.
And I was just doing the North,
so anything from Mississippi,
anything from the South where
there was even more surveillance
photography, you know, literally
a government agency to track
and disrupt, that would be a
fascinating project, I'm sure.
Not sure it's going to be me though.
Beverly. [inaudible]
>> BEVERLY BRANNAN: I
should say something
about the way the library
acquires digital photographs.
It's pretty difficult for
us to do because we have
to maintain standards
that are higher
than the commercial standards.
So, when people try to send us
things, we have to go through a lot
of gyrations to get
it up to the level
that we can put it on our website.
We don't have a good delivery system
in place yet for digital images.
So, we have worked with
the few photographers
who send us hard drives because
none of the other commercial methods
of sending things seems to work
with the security systems that are
in place here at the library.
So, they send us a hard drive.
We download the images and
send them back the hard drive,
which sounds pretty
clunky and it is.
We also work with photographers
on the rights.
They have to sign a form telling
us exactly what rights they own,
what rights they retain, and which
ones they give to the public.
And a lot of people are off
put by having to declare this.
So, that is an educational
process we have to go
through with each photographer.
So we try to get multiple
photographs,
multiple digital photographs
from individual photographers
so that it's not going
through this process
with each person who
sends a picture.
So, we're kind of in a slow
clunky mode of acquiring.
But we do acquire digital images and
when possible we put them up online,
up on the website now, but a lot of
people want to retain their rights.
So, the images are not
available at present.
And, so we have to keep updating
the digital images until such time
as the people are willing
to let us release them.
So, that's a little
bit of background
about how we acquire digital images.
>> MARK SPELTZ: Thank you for that.
Incredibly complex,
no doubt about it.
Yeah?
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: (inaudible)
>> MARK SPELTZ: What
surprised me the most
and it shouldn't have
been a surprise,
was that 97 of the photos were going
to focus on ordinary Americans.
That's usually one of my main
points besides the movement happened
down south is who lead and fought
and you know did the daily work
in the movement and I think that's
also the most inspiring part.
You know, we don't need to wait
around for anybody,
change begins with one.
But, I think that that
seeing that on the pages was,
shouldn't have been surprising,
but it was a really good reminder.
Out in San Francisco,
I'm going to be working
with the Wells Fargo Family
and Business History Center,
so doing corporate history of
the company and then working
with families who are clients.
Yes?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER: (inaudible)
>> MARK SPELTZ: Well, I do think
about the surveillance
photography a lot
and I always keep my
eyes out for that.
Any historian or author knows
that you're always gathering
material for the next projects.
I'm also incredibly
interested in the photography
of Malcolm X. I spent a day in
New York a couple weeks ago,
going through his 3 to 4,000
photos at the Schaumburg Center,
so some pictures taken by him
during International travel- nation
of Islam photographs, things
that he took during court cases
with the n action of Islam.
So, I think there's something
to be done with that.
But, that's you know a big
project and books are three
to four years of your
life, you know?
I don't brew beer or make change.
I do history in my free time.
Yeah?
>>AUDIENCE MEMBER: (inaudible)
>> MARK SPELTZ: Yeah.
I didn't specifically
come across them.
I also wasn't looking.
It's amazing, even though
the book has 100 photographs,
you know that's not a lot
in a photography book.
We had a binder about three or
four inches thick, and when we got
down to 150, cutting
those last 50, 25,
like you know incredibly painful.
And then when you cast that net so
wide and you're working full time,
you can only visit so many places.
So, you go to the best
repositories that you know of.
But, that's not to say that
you can't sometimes get lucky.
I worked at the National
Archives and I worked
with an incredible archivist there.
The Black Panthers were
investigated in 1970
in a Congressional investigation
and so they published a big thick
document, book detailing everything
and there are photographs
in there as evidence.
And I got really curious, well
where are those photographs now
from the Congressional hearings?
And sure enough somebody
was able to turn them
up at the National Archives.
And there were photographs that
somebody had taken locally,
documenting where the free
breakfast centers were,
where the Panthers were located.
There were some other thigs
related, evidence of a bombing
or somebody's car or something.
And then there were
press photographs
that the investigation
got from the local press.
And then used to identify
everybody in it.
There were police mug shots.
So, this archive was squirrelled
away somewhere and it wasn't
that the actual prints from the
evidence that I was able to find,
it was actually able to get them
through the publication of the book.
So, they were the book files.
You know, which was just crazy
and you would never
think to look that way.
So, often times you
might start on a search
and then you get lucky
finding it elsewhere.
And if I had started out looking
for the book publication
files, they'd never exist, so.
Yeah, great.
>> PAM JACKSON: So, we'll
have to be our last question.
I just want to say
thanks again, Mark.
Your presentation, your materials
are vivid and striking and engaging.
Very much appreciate your work
and I think that one of the things
that I love about the opportunity
to be here and share this
with you all is that our hope
is that it opened your minds
and your hearts and makes us
curious and I want to learn more
and make sure that you know
our empathy is present.
And our history is known and that we
can be the kind of people that make
that change, as you
mentioned versus wait for it.
So, thank you so much for
being here and sharing with us.
I'd also like to thank
and acknowledge,
the Center for the Book's
Communication Director,
Guy Lamolinara for
making today's event.
Thank you again Beverly Brannan
for your partnership with Prints
and Photographs and to acknowledge
Daniel A. P. Murray Association
and for their co-sponsorship.
Thank you all so much for
being here and take care.
[applause]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc dot gov.