DC -- Newseum -- Exhibits -- (4) Civil Rights at 50 (1967):
Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.
Description of Pictures: “1967: Civil Rights at 50"
“1967: Civil Rights at 50” tells the dramatic story of the growing militancy of the struggle for racial justice in 1967. The exhibit uses powerful photos and images of historic newspapers and magazines to explore how African Americans used their First Amendment rights to fight for change — at times at great cost. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and boxing champion Muhammad Ali faced harsh criticism for challenging the Vietnam War, and Black Power activists Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown alienated the press and the public by advocating militant tactics.
1967 also saw the deadliest rioting of the decade erupt in cities struggling with inequality, poverty and police violence, from Detroit to Newark, N.J. In Oakland, Calif., the Black Panther Party channeled anger over persistent inequality into radical action. After bursting into headlines with a dramatic armed protest at the California state capitol, the Panthers began to grow into a national movement by year’s end.
“1967: Civil Rights at 50” is part of a changing exhibit exploring the relationship between the First Amendment and the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.
Slide Show: Want to see the pictures as a slide show?
[Slideshow]
Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]
Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
NEWR50_170202_006.JPG: 1967
Civil Rights at 50
"We were forced to build America, and if forced to, we will tear it down."
-- Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton
The crusade for racial justice grew more militant than ever in 1967.
A year after Black Power activists reshaped the civil rights movement with fiery demands for empowerment and racial pride, many black Americans were electrified by new calls to fight back against oppression. That summer, simmering tensions in cities struggling with inequality, poverty and police violence exploded in the deadliest rioting of the 1960s.
Riots in the streets and calls for black people to take up arms against racial injustice eroded public and press support for the civil rights movement. A federal investigation of the riots concluded the nation was "moving toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."
In Oakland, Calif., the Black Panther Party moved to channel anger into radical action, positioning itself as the new vanguard of the struggle for racial justice.
NEWR50_170202_010.JPG: King Denounces Vietnam War
As the United States grew more divided over the Vietnam War, so did the civil rights movement> Black Americans represented 11 percent of the US population, but 20 percent of US war casualties. Radical civil rights groups opposed the war, but most moderate leaders did not want to challenge President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had championed landmark civil rights laws.
In April 1967, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. shocked America with a scathing speech opposing the costly war for undermining the fight against poverty at home/ He called the US government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
King's attack infuriated the president and most civil rights leaders. More than 160 major newspapers denounced King for being reckless and disloyal. Though public opinion began to shift against the war in the following months, King faced criticism about his anti-war stand until his assassination in 1968.
NEWR50_170202_016.JPG: Martin Luther King Jr. marches with activists Dr. Benjamin Spock, left, and Monsignor Charles Owen Rice in a massive anti-war march in New York.
NEWR50_170202_019.JPG: Writing in the widely read Reader's Digest, columnist Carl Rowan, below, criticized, Martin Luther King Jr. for betraying the civil rights cause with his anti-war stance.
NEWR50_170202_029.JPG: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his controversial anti-war speech before 3,000 people packed into New York's Riverside Church.
NEWR50_170202_036.JPG: Muhammad Ali Defies the Draft
Charismatic and outspoken heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali was drafted into the US Army in April 1967, but he refused to enlist. A Muslim, he cited religious reasons for seeking conscientious objector status. Ali was denounced as unpatriotic, convicted of draft evasion, banned form boxing and stripped of his boxing titles. He became an anti-war spokesman whose impassioned stand resonated with many. The Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1971.
NEWR50_170202_038.JPG: Editors of Freedomways, a journal aimed at black readers, wrote that Muhammad Ali had "gained the respect and admiration" of many with his refusal to go to Vietnam.
NEWR50_170202_043.JPG: Muhammad Ali faces reporters in Houston after he refused to be indicted into the US Army.
NEWR50_170202_045.JPG: SNCC's Influence Wanes:
A driving force in civil rights protests from sit-ins to Selma, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) struggled to survive after it rejected nonviolence in favor of the more militant Black Panther philosophy. With its new focus on black self-reliance, SNCC purged white activists from its ranks. Amid internal divisions and negative press coverage, membership and funding dwindled. The group was nearing bankruptcy.
Controversial SNCC Chairman Stokely Carmichael -- who launched the Black Power movement in 1966 -- stepped down in May 1967 and embarked on a give-month world tour, traveling to communist Cuba, North Vietnam and Africa to promote Black Power as a global revolution. Carmichael's radical speeches and meetings with communist leaders enraged American politicians and journalists, who accused him to treason.
Carmichael who succeeded at SNCC by H. Rap Brown, a 23-year-old grass-roots organizer whose firebrand rhetoric further damaged the group's reputation.
NEWR50_170202_049.JPG: In London, Black Power activist Stokely Carmichael tied the struggles of black Americans to those of people in developing nations.
NEWR50_170202_059.JPG: The SNCC newspaper The Movement covered Stokely Carmichael's visit to communist Cuba and the backlash he faced in the mainstream press.
NEWR50_170202_071.JPG: U.S. News & World Report detailed calls for Stokely Carmichael to be prosecuted for radical statements he made abroad.
NEWR50_170202_079.JPG: Brown Tests the Limit of Free Speech
SNCC's new chairman, H. Rap Brown, alienated moderate supporters by urging black people wage war against white America. In a July speech in Cambridge, Md., Brown famously cried, "If America don't come around, we're going to burn it down!" Tensions erupted that night between black residents and white police. A school was set ablaze, and Brown was charged with arson and inciting a riot. But to SNCC supporters, Brown's multiple arrests were attempts by authorities to suppress his free speech.
NEWR50_170202_082.JPG: Standing atop a car in Cambridge, Md., H. Rap Brown urges a crowd to take violent action against white society.
NEWR50_170202_085.JPG: Life covered H. Rap Brown's indictment on charges of arson and inciting a riot after violence exploded in Cambridge, Md.
NEWR50_170202_087.JPG: Black Panthers Fight Gun Ban
In Oakland, Calif., Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale galvanized local support for their Black Panther Party for Self-Defense with a bold move to challenge police brutality against black Americans. Arming themselves with guns and law books, the Panthers patrolled the streets of Oakland to monitor police and ensure that black residents' rights were respected. Police harassment declined.
But authorities soon retaliated. California lawmakers proposed a ban on citizens carrying loaded weapons. In May, Seale led two dozen armed Panthers to the state capitol to protest the legislation, sparking a tense standoff with police that ended with multiple arrests.
Splashed across newspapers and television screens, he capitol "invasion" stunned Americans thrust the Panthers into the national spotlight. Calls poured in from black Americans across the country seeking to start local chapters. But the gun law passed, outlawing the Panthers' core tactic.
NEWR50_170202_090.JPG: Atmed Panthers led by Bobby Seale, right, leave the state capitol in Sacramento, Calif., after protesting proposed gun legislation.
NEWR50_170202_094.JPG: Two Panthers speak with a police officer during the Sacramento protest
NEWR50_170202_104.JPG: The Panther Newspaper
The Panthers launched a newspaper in April to counter mainstream press coverage depicting them as dangerous, gun-toting criminals. The Black Panther became an essential tool for fundraising, organizing and communicating party ideology by publishing editorials, legal advice and eyewitness accounts of police brutality. Edited by activist Eldridge Cleaver, the newspaper was known for its combative language and vibrant political cartoons.
NEWR50_170202_107.JPG: Covering the Panthers
Media coverage of the Black Panthers focused on their violent tactics without much analysis of the group's underlying struggle for racial justice. The mainstream press, like many white Americans, reacted with fear and skepticism to the movement. In 1967, most news coverage largely ignored the Panthers' criticism of police brutality and their core goals of better housing, education and employment for black Americans.
NEWR50_170202_111.JPG: Deadly Rioting in Detroit
Racial unrest engulfed more than 150 US cities in 1967. Hardest hit was Detroit, where a police raid of an unlicensed bar sparked five days of violence and chaos.
Looting and flames ravaged entire blocks of the city. Rioters hurled bottles and bricks. Snipers targeted firefighters, who abandoned burning buildings. Thousands of National Guardsmen and US Army paratroopers swept the city in tanks and helicopters. Police and Guardsmen shot rioters -- many of whom were unarmed -- at will. With 43 people killed, more than 500 buildings destroyed and some $50 million in damage, the riot was one of the deadliest and most destructive in US history.
Urban rage was rooted in racial oppression, poverty and despair, and violence was largely sparked by confrontations with white police. But televised scenes of fire and fury left the impression of black America in violent revolt, damaging white support for civil rights.
NEWR50_170202_114.JPG: Raging fires in Detroit appeared in the centerfold of an August issue of Life magazine devoted to "Negro revolt."
NEWR50_170202_119.JPG: Life magazine's cover showed as 12-year-old boy wounded by gunfire during a riot in Newark, NJ that killed 26 and injured more than 1,000.
NEWR50_170202_123.JPG: News Coverage Challenged
President Lyndon B. Johnson charged Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner with investigating the summer's riots. Naming white racism as the chief cause, the Kerner Commission also condemned the media's failure to report on the underlying problems black Americans faced. It found that reporters made the riots appear worse by uncritically accepting inflated official estimates of damages, and called the press "shockingly backward" for not employing more black journalists.
NEWR50_170202_127.JPG: Two days into the Detroit riot. The Detroit News covered the destruction wreaked on the city. A front-page editorial argued that "mobsters, arsonists and looters were not fighting a civil rights battle."
NEWR50_170202_131.JPG: Crowds riot on 12th Street in Detroit
NEWR50_170202_135.JPG: A Harris Poll in Newsweek magazine compared the opinions of black and white Americans on the causes of rioting.
NEWR50_170202_143.JPG: "Free Huey!"
In the early hours of Oct. 28, a traffic-stop altercation between Black Panther leader Huey Newton and Oakland, Calif., police left one officer dead, another injured and Newton shot in the stomach. At the hospital, Newton was beaten by police and arrested for murder. Newspapers nationwide ran a photograph of a badly injured Newton shackled to a gurney, his body contorted in pain. Newton was convicted on manslaughter in 1968, but the verdict was later overturned.
he Panthers used Newton's arrest to channel black anger and reinvigorate their fight for decent housing, education and employment. The party's Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver launched a massive campaign promoting Newton as an icon of black resistance and his arrest as the start of a revolution against America's racist power structure.
With a rallying cry of "Free Huey!" a local group with fewer than 100 members became a national movement.
NEWR50_170202_146.JPG: Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver composed this iconic portrait of Huey Newton seated in a thronelike chair, a spear in one hand, a rifle in the other. After Newton's arrest, the image was printed on posters to raise money for his defense.
NEWR50_170202_152.JPG: The Black Panther Party newspaper demanded Huey Newton's release and an end to police brutality in a front-page editorial: "We have had enough of black men and women being shot down like dogs in the street."
NEWR50_170202_156.JPG: This photo of Huey Newton handcuffed to a hospital gurney appeared on national television and in newspapers.
NEWR50_170202_161.JPG: Signs of Progress
Jet, a newsweekly aimed at black readers, covered signs of progress in a turbulent year for civil rights. Thurgood Marshall was appointed as the first black Supreme Court Justice, and the landmark Loving v Virginia Supreme Court decision banned laws against interracial marriage.
NEWR50_170202_169.JPG: FBI Infiltrates Black Power Groups
Fearful of violent revolution after the 1967 summer riots, the FBI expanded its long-running secret intelligence program COINTELPRO to suppress Black Power groups such as the Black Panthers. Starting in 1967, the FBI placed informants in nearly every Black Power group. Over the next four years, the FBI conducted hundreds of illegal operations, leaked damaging propaganda to journalists and stifled activists' First Amendment rights through harassment and imprisonment.
NEWR50_170202_172.JPG: Panthers protest as the 1968 trial of Huey Newton in Oakland, Calif. Newton was convicted of voluntary manslaughter of a police officer, but his conviction was overturned in 1970.
NEWR50_170202_175.JPG: 1967
Civil Rights at 50
Boxing champion Muhammad Ali stands outside the federal courthouse in Houston in April 1967 after refusing to be drafted into the US Army.
Teacher Alert!
Find free educational resources about how the First Amendment shaped the civil rights movement at NewseumED.org
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Description of Subject Matter: Make Some Noise
By Dinah Douglas, assistant Web writer
WASHINGTON — The Newseum opened two new exhibits Aug. 2 on the U.S. civil rights movement that highlighted the contributions and struggles of students.
With the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington approaching on Aug. 28, the timely exhibits underscore how organizers in the movement used the media to garner public support.
"Make Some Noise: Students and the Civil Rights Movement" takes visitors through a timeline of events that defined the movement and its student organizers, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). ....
Adjacent to "Make Some Noise," the "Civil Rights at 50" exhibit of newspaper front pages and magazine covers, captures the turbulence of the 1963 through events such as the Children's Crusade in Birmingham, Ala., and the assassination in Mississippi of civil rights leader Medgar Evers. The display shows media coverage as it really happened, including press biases and prejudices. "Civil Rights at 50" will be updated in 2014 and 2015.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.)
I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com
and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Directly Related Pages: Other pages with content (DC -- Newseum -- Exhibits -- (4) (civil rights title varies)) directly related to this one:
[Display ALL photos on one page]:
2018_DC_Newseum_Rights50: DC -- Newseum -- Exhibits -- (4) Civil Rights at 50 (1968) (69 photos from 2018)
2016_DC_Newseum_Rights50: DC -- Newseum -- Exhibits -- (4) Civil Rights at 50 (1966) (47 photos from 2016)
2015_DC_Newseum_Rights50: DC -- Newseum -- Exhibits -- (4) Civil Rights at 50 (1965) (43 photos from 2015)
2015_DC_Newseum_Ferguson: DC -- Newseum -- Exhibits -- (4) Protesting Ferguson (8 photos from 2015)
2014_DC_Newseum_Rights50: DC -- Newseum -- Exhibits -- (4) Civil Rights at 50 (1964) (31 photos from 2014)
2013_DC_Newseum_Rights50: DC -- Newseum -- Exhibits -- (4) Civil Rights at 50 (1963) (33 photos from 2013)
2013_DC_Newseum_Noise: DC -- Newseum -- Exhibits -- (4) Make Some Noise (63 photos from 2013)
2017 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Trips this year:
Civil War Trust conferences in Pensacola, FL, Chattanooga, TN (via sites in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee) and Fredericksburg, VA,
a family reunion in The Dells, Wisconsin (via sites in Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin),
New York City, and
my 12th consecutive San Diego Comic Con trip (including sites in Arizona).
For some reason, several of my photos have been published in physical books this year which is pretty cool. Ones that I know about:
"Tarzan, Jungle King of Popular Culture" (David Lemmo),
"The Great Crusade: A Guide to World War I American Expeditionary Forces Battlefields and Sites" (Stephen T. Powers and Kevin Dennehy),
"The American Spirit" (David McCullough),
"Civil War Battlefields: Walking the Trails of History" (David T. Gilbert),
"The Year I Was Peter the Great: 1956 — Khrushchev, Stalin's Ghost, and a Young American in Russia" (Marvin Kalb), and
"The Judge: 26 Machiavellian Lessons" (Ron Collins and David Skover).
Number of photos taken this year: just below 560,000.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Limiting Text: You can turn off all of this text by clicking this link:
[Thumbnails Only]