Newly Discovered Civil Rights Photos Reveal Racist History

by Glynn Wilson

When the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and later Martin Luther King Jr. stirred up the civil rights pot in Birmingham, Alabama, in the early and mid-1960s, The Birmingham News was reluctant to expose the blatant racism in its hometown.

Photo by Spider Martin

A civil rights advocate on the historic Selma-to-Montgomery march for the right to vote

The paper did not go all out to cover the violence or to document the news of fire hoses and attack dogs being used against black protesters in a town that later became known as "Bomingham," according to one of the photographers who shot pictures for the News in those days.

Only when the New York Times and CBS News came to Alabama and shined the bright spotlight of national publicity on the events did the local press begin to cover the news, according to Spider Martin, whose photographs, which appeared in other newspapers and magazines all over the world through the news wires of the time, are slated to be part of the new African-American wing of the Smithsonian Institute to be built on The Mall in Washington, D.C.

According to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, in an August, 1965 interview, the images shot by Martin and others were critical to the success of the civil rights struggle.

"Spider, we could have marched, we could have protested forever, but if it weren't for guys like you, it would have been for nothing," King reportedly told Martin, according to a book written about those days by author Hubert Grissom.

"The whole world saw your pictures," King said. "That's why the Voting Right's bill was passed."

When an old box of black and white negatives from those days recently surfaced, discovered by a photography intern in a closet at the Birmingham News building, the paper ran a story about it along with some of the photos that were never seen by readers in the '60s.

But the photographer who found the photos and the reporter who authored the story never talked to Spider Martin to get his side of the story, because before he could capitalize on his important collection of images, Mr. Martin took his own life on April 8, 2003.

In the months prior to his death, I had been working as a free-lance reporter for the New York Times, in some cases with Martin shooting the pictures. I had known Martin since 1986 and had finally convinced him to sit down for a series of interviews about his life and times. We had planned to do a book together, but it was not to be.

So when I saw the version of events presented by the Birmingham News and the Associated Press story that moved as result of the find, I remembered what Spider had said about how badly he was treated when he willingly took the assignments to cover civil rights events, including the Selma-to Montgomery marches, especially on what came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

The management at the Birmingham News in those days, including the staff of photographers, to put it kindly were less than enthusiastic about covering the protests of African-Americans in the South.

Ed Jones, now retired and 81-years-old, told the News reporter:

"The editors thought if you didn't publish it, much of this would go away. Associated Press kept on wanting pictures, and The News would be slow on letting them have them, so they flooded the town with photographers. The AP started sending pictures all over, and it mushroomed."

But what he failed to say is that on numerous occasions he purposely destroyed film shot of the protests by Martin, leaving the film in the developer for too long while he went to breakfast or lunch. At one point when confronted about it, Martin told me, Jones just blew him off and said: "Hey Martin, it ain't nothing but a bunch of niggers. Don't worry about it."

Martin said Tom Self and the rest "were the same way. They didn't care. They just thought they were better than black people."

Martin said he approached the Birmingham News in 1985 to get his hands on his old negatives. Even after obtaining permission from then-executive editor Jim Jacobson, chief photographer Tom Self told him: "Oh, I threw that stuff away a long time ago. It wasn't nothing but garbage. It was just a bunch of niggers."

When Mr. Self left the room, Martin said, a black woman receptionist who overheard the conversation whispered that she knew where some of his negatives were. She snuck them out to him.

They turned out to be the Bloody Sunday photos now on display in the Alabama Archives building in Montgomery and on the National Park Service historic Civil Rights Trail. They have been shown at many of the civil rights institutes around the country, including the grand opening of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in 1992 and the Capitol rotundas in Montgomery and Washington.

Before his death, Martin was convinced those historic images would have been destroyed if not for a bit of initiative and luck on that day in 1985. And he would have been amazed to hear that a box of those negatives survived in a closet for an intern to find - considering the racism and lack of interest in history by the local newspaper's management and staff.

Links
Shuttlesworth Sees Newly Published Civil Rights Era Photos
Birmingham News Publishes Newly Found Civil Rights Era Photos
From Negatives to Positives: Birmingham News Glosses Over It's Racist Past