Go Tell It: Civil Rights Photography

This summer, a Reuters photographer snapped his shutter at the moment when a young Black nurse named Ieshia Evans stepped out in front of a line of riot-gear-laden police officers and appeared to repel them—and was arrested immediately afterward. She was a peaceful protester in the Black Lives Matter marches taking place in Baton Rouge on July 9. The photograph immediately went viral, and everybody but everybody—including me—wrote about it. So there's extra-good reason during this moment to revisit historical photography of the work of people arguing simply that Black lives have not mattered as much as they should, and that it's time for the iniquitous inequity to end. SAM has organized this small display of Jim Crow and civil rights photographs for that reason. You'll see images by Dan Budnik, Danny Lyon, Roy DeCarava, Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, and Marion Post Wolcott. You'll also see a new 45-minute video by the Philadelphia artist Shikeith called #blackmendream, in which nine Black men are interviewed with their backs facing the camera. "When did you become a Black man?" is one of the questions. What are we all becoming?