Civil Rights
With the passing of Coretta Scott King recently, the legacy of her husband, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was being discussed. On Boing Boing, I found a link to some previously unpublished pictures from the Birmingham (AL) News related to the civil rights movement.
As I reviewed these pictures, they felt very sanitized to me. I am accustomed to seeing the violence, often graphically depicted in the photos of the movement taken by LIFE magazine and the AP. It struck me that these shots were taken this way to show Alabamans a view of the movement that was newsworthy, yet without the level of ugliness that they would have found objectionable.
It's often critical to consider the conditions of the time and place when reviewing news and information. Simply put, had the Birmingham News shown the uglier, more violent face of the anti-civil rights faction, they might have been attacked and/or their readers might have shut down on reading about the civil rights movement. Their sanitized version of the story presented it in a way that their readership would be willing to accept, while the argument can be made that they soft-peddled the story, had they pushed it the way the national outlets did, the consequences for them might have been grave.
These pictures are worth a look. They portray the civil rights movement as something civil, yet in truth, it was often a street fight or a murder in the dark of night, with the anti-civil rights faction using dangerous or deadly force.
As I reviewed these pictures, they felt very sanitized to me. I am accustomed to seeing the violence, often graphically depicted in the photos of the movement taken by LIFE magazine and the AP. It struck me that these shots were taken this way to show Alabamans a view of the movement that was newsworthy, yet without the level of ugliness that they would have found objectionable.
It's often critical to consider the conditions of the time and place when reviewing news and information. Simply put, had the Birmingham News shown the uglier, more violent face of the anti-civil rights faction, they might have been attacked and/or their readers might have shut down on reading about the civil rights movement. Their sanitized version of the story presented it in a way that their readership would be willing to accept, while the argument can be made that they soft-peddled the story, had they pushed it the way the national outlets did, the consequences for them might have been grave.
These pictures are worth a look. They portray the civil rights movement as something civil, yet in truth, it was often a street fight or a murder in the dark of night, with the anti-civil rights faction using dangerous or deadly force.
posted by Scooter at 5:55 PM
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