Seeing Through Race - by Martin A Berger (Paperback)

About the Book

"George Gund Foundation imprint in African American studies"--p. [1].

Book Synopsis

Seeing through Race is a boldly original reinterpretation of the iconic photographs of the black civil rights struggle. Martin A. Berger's provocative and groundbreaking study shows how the very pictures credited with arousing white sympathy, and thereby paving the way for civil rights legislation, actually limited the scope of racial reform in the 1960s. Berger analyzes many of these famous images--dogs and fire hoses turned against peaceful black marchers in Birmingham, tear gas and clubs wielded against voting-rights marchers in Selma--and argues that because white sympathy was dependent on photographs of powerless blacks, these unforgettable pictures undermined efforts to enact--or even imagine--reforms that threatened to upend the racial balance of power.

From the Back Cover

"Seeing Through Race is an indispensable and highly original account of how white Americans understood and remembered the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Berger shows us why photography was so central to civil rights, and his readings of iconic images are always penetrating and at times brilliant. His central argument, that whites wanted to be in charge of the movement, is complemented with rich insights on almost every page. It should be required reading for anyone interested in protest movements."

--John Stauffer, Chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University



"The fervor of the 1960s civil rights movement may seem outdated by now, but terrible scenes enacted on the streets of Selma and Birmingham are preserved in the mass of surviving news photographs. Martin Berger argues that these pictures were never simple visual documents. By awakening the nation to the horrific violence of fire hoses and attack dogs, they defined what was meant by "civil rights movement." Always engaging in its narrative as well as in its analytical and theoretical discourse, Seeing through Race is a stunning achievement both as history and as criticism."

--Alan Trachtenberg, Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University

Review Quotes

"A well-researched and nuanced analysis of iconic civil rights images. . . . A compelling work."-- "American Studies Journal"

". . . A compelling work that contributes to the rich scholarship on the African American experience in the United States. It also provides an important example of the ways that a critical engagement with the meaning and construction of whiteness contributes to the projects of social justice equality."-- "American Studies"

"A comprehensive study of the language in which editors, reporters, and photographers shaped and demarcated the period's field of vision."-- "CAA Reviews"

"Brilliant, provocative study of photographs of the US civil rights movement . . . . A first-rate book!"-- "CHOICE"

About the Author

Martin A. Berger is Professor and Director of the Visual Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood and Sight Unseen: Whiteness and American Visual Culture, both from UC Press. David J. Garrow is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.