(Any hateful comments will be reported and removed.) Ruby Bridges, the first black child to desegregate an all-white school in 1960March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963After the 1963 March on Washington in which Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and other civil rights leaders met with JFKA police dog attacks a 17-year-old civil rights demonstrator in Birmingham, Ala., on May 3, 1963Undated photo shows Rosa Parks riding on the Montgomery Area Transit System bus. Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus on Dec. 1, 1955 and ignited the boycott that led to a federal court ruling against segregation in public transportation. In 1955, Montgomery's racially segregated buses carried 30,000 to 40,000 blacks each day. Students of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, shout insults at Elizabeth Eckford as she walks toward the school building on the first day of school in 1957. Schools in Arkansas integrated races after the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Freedom Riders sit on a bus during a trip from Montgomery to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1961. The Freedom Riders would brave mobs and endure savage beatings to desegregate interstate travel.
The scene in the aftermath of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, Sept. 16, 1963Sarah Jean Collins, 12, lies in bed after being blinded by the dynamite that killed her sister in the bombing of a Birmingham church in September 1963. Four African American girls were killed in the blast.Malcolm X addresses a rally in Harlem in New York City on June 29, 1963.
What is your opinion on these photos from the US Civil Rights Movement era?
I like that Malcom X picture. I like pictures that kinda show you what it would have been like if you were there. There's s much detail and atmosphere in it :)
These photos break my heart. I was a kid when that stuff was happening and remember it first hand.
I never knew any black people when I was a kid, but I saw people like Nat King Cole, Sidney Poitier and other black actors and musicians. I just thought of black people as people. I had heard about segregation but didn't know much about it.
I got my first guitar in 1965 when I was eleven years old. My dad was a lead machinist at a major aerospace company in the Los Angeles area. An engineer who worked there offered to come over and give me lessons. I was surprised when a tall, slender black man with a cool goatee walked into our house. He was soft spoken, patient and kind, and he was obviously more sophisticated than my parents. Come to find out, he wasn't just a guitarist, he was a master Flamenco guitarist and had been to Spain twice to study the craft. I was in awe of Mr. Freeman and came to greatly admire him.
Here's the thing, this was during the Watts Riots at the height of the civil rights unrest. Mr. Freeman had grown up during segregation and become an aerospace engineer and Flamenco guitarist. He was a cosmopolitan guy. He may not have realized it, but in coming to give me guitar lessons, he was like an ambassador from the black community. After meeting him, I couldn't possibly be racist or think that black people were inferior, not that I ever did.
In high school, one of the cliques I fell in with were the hippies. Woodstock had just happened. Jimi Hendrix was one of my idols. Over the years, I learned more and more about segregation and the civil rights movement.
I wound up with a job as a motor vehicle field adjuster/appraiser in the Los Angeles area. I met and became friends with many black people with my company. I also spent a lot of time in black parts of the city and met many black people. I just saw them as people and never had one problem.
Segregation was a wicked and shameful chapter in our country's history.
powerful images. Rosa parks most notable... only a woman could get away with that. if was a man, he'd have been smashed. Since then, I've given up my seat to a pregnant black woman... she needed it more. It's unfortunate the images say how biggoted some people were, because I don't think all were. I wonder what % were.
The one in Harlem strikes me because I've been there in recent memory, and to be honest, I'm not so sure things are much better for so many "black" people... like they are free, but just wanding around a complex world, not knowing what direction to go. Sure that's true for others, but I think black people took a lot of damage to their family units and culture that for too many, has not healed. Black people continue to be pushed out as they are "gentrified".
I wish black people could realize the dismay non black people have seeing their situation. So many care and want to just see them succeed. I grew up with "black people", half my school was "bussed" together. There was the normal kids and I liked them, just normal people and they made it. There was those that had a cloud over them... their behavior, attitudes, ethic was trashed... and most aren't alive. It's frustrating seeing the patterns of trauma go on for generations and I think so many black people experience it but it's so hard to climb above. It's like watching people trapped in a sinking ship and smacking the glass when they are on the other side.
I see these photos and I think the chains were broken by force several times, but the heart takes so long to heal.
I'm grateful when I see those who have risen above their abuse, no matter what culture. For I've been reading history and it's story is trauma throughout.
That photo of Rosa Parks brings up some feelings. I have feelings about most of the others but don't want to share them on this website. I met Rosa Parks many years before she died. One thing I take from her story is I refuse to believe she just woke up one day and said today I will become an Icon! She simply had enough of that BS!
These pictures provide a partial history of the US Civil Rights Movement era. They don't show the entire picture, but they are an interesting part of history that should not be forgotten.
I can't pick a favorite. They're all very good photos. The one with the dog kind of stands out to me, though. It's really sad. I don't really blame the dog for what he did. He was trained by his hateful handlers.
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