Unseen. Unforgotten.
A special report from the Birmingham News
March 6, 1957: Lamar Weaver, an early supporter of civil rights, greets the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and his wife, Ruby, in the whites-only waiting room at Birmingham's train depot, Terminal Station.
The Birmingham News has published an amazing series of never-before-seen photographs of the civil rights movement in Alabama. As the story explains...
The section is the result of research by Alexander Cohn, a 30-year-old former photo intern at The News. In November 2004, Cohn went through an equipment closet at the newspaper in search of a lens and saw a cardboard box full of negatives marked, "Keep. Do Not Sell."Take a look.
Cohn, who grew up in Mountain Brook and is a master's candidate at the University of Missouri, researched the images and discovered that many had never been published.
With the cooperation of The News, Cohn interviewed dozens of photographers, clergymen, elected officials, civil rights movement participants, historians and other witnesses to the events. More than 30 photos appear in today's special section, and dozens more are available on the newspaper's Web site at www.al.com/unseen.
posted by Carol at 1:37 PM
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3 Comments:
Thank you, Carol, for this link; thank you to Mr. Cohn for being curious and persistent in your efforts to preserve history; and thank you to the people at the Birmingham News who didn't throw away or destroy the negatives.
Carol,
Have you ever read any of Taylor Branch's books on the Civil Rights Movement? If the subject of these photos is of interest to you, I think the books would be, too.
My mother tells a story about being a student teacher in Alabama in 1962. She had grown up in New England. In the school yard she walked up to the water fountain that had no line. It was of course the "colored" drinking fountain.
The principal came up and drank behind her to prevent an incident.
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