Civil Rights and the Promise of Equality - (Double Exposure) (Paperback)

About the Book

A selection of nearly 60 photographs, some shocking, all moving, that recall the events and experiences that have inspired subsequent generations and communities of people around the world..

Book Synopsis

Double Exposure is a major new series based on the remarkable photography collection held by the Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The powerful images depicted in this volume include many of the photographs that helped to galvanize support from around the world for the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Among them are photographs from Leonard Freed's series, "Black in White America," Ernest C. Withers' signature photograph of the Sanitation Workers' Solidarity March in Memphis, Tennessee, and Charles Moore's documentation of police brutality during the 1963 Children's Crusade in Birmingham, Alabama. Also featured are Spider Martin's shots of the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965, including the iconic Two Minute Warning, James H. Wallace's visual record of a Ku Klux Klan rally in 1964, and Burk Uzzle's images following Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. In addition to over 60 photographs, this volume features a foreword by Founding Director Lonnie G. Bunch III, along with essays by civil rights leader and United States Representative the late John Lewis, and activist Bryan Stevenson.;lt;/DIV>

Review Quotes

"Reveals the ways in which African Americans have used activism, community and culture to fight for social justice and create a better life"--Nicole Crowder, The Washington Post, In Sight

About the Author

John Robert Lewis (February 21, 1940 - July 17, 2020) was an American politician and civil-rights leader who served in the United States House of Representatives for Georgia's 5th congressional district from 1987 until his death in 2020. Former Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis helped open Freedom Schools, and the Mississippi Freedom Summer. Lewis was one of the original 13 Freedom Riders in 1960 who road on a bus from Washington, DC to New Orleans, LA in an integrated fashion to pressure the federal government to reinforce the law that segregating interstate travel was unconstitutional. He was one of the original architects of the bill that helped establish the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Bryan A. Stevenson is Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a private, nonprofit law organization he founded that focuses on social justice and human rights in the context of criminal justice reform in the United States. Stevenson joined the clinical faculty at New York University School of Law as Professor of Clinical Law in 1998. Stevenson's work has won him national acclaim. In 1995, he was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award Prize. He is also a 1989 recipient of the Reebok Human Rights Award, the 1991 ACLU National Medal of Liberty, the 2000 Olaf Palme Prize in Stockholm, Sweden for international human rights. He has published several widely disseminated manuals on capital litigation and written extensively on criminal justice, capital punishment and civil rights issues.