Remembering the Civil Rights Movement

Lyon grew to become a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), pronounced “Snick,” and its first workers photographer. He was employed by James Forman, SNCC’s govt director, who he described as “the least recognized of the great civil rights leaders.”

A chronicle by means of images

His work with SNCC chronicled a number of the Civil Rights motion’s most iconic and unsung figures and moments. Two years in the past, the Rubenstein Library acquired Lyon’s SNCC images and papers. An exhibit of his work, “Movement and Memory,” was on show on the library’s images gallery. The exhibit, which opened in April and closed in November, was an apt reminder of the Civil Rights motion and the management of Martin Luther King throughout the federal vacation that honors his legacy on the helm of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

The exhibit, managed by Caitlin Margaret Kelly, curator of the archive of documentary arts on the college’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Books & Manuscript Library, options an remark by retired politician, civil rights large and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young: “(the) SNCC utilized photographers with a focus on the function of their work, yet, ‘Danny took this function and made art.’”

Lyon made photos of the September 1963 funeral for the 4 murdered women in Birmingham, Alabama. 

“Everyone was furious of course,” he stated concerning the victims who died when the church they attended was bombed throughout Sunday School. “And SNCC people expected, and probably hoped for some kind of disruption, some mass protests. It really didn’t happen. Just a lot of sadness and heartbreak.”

Lyon captured enduring photos of the 1963 March on Washington, together with an image of Lewis talking on the Lincoln Memorial earlier than civil rights martyr Martin Luther King delivered his “I Have A Dream Speech.” 

Lyon’s 50-years-long friendship with Lewis ended with a deathbed interview.

“I was lucky to know him,” he stated. “I’m humbled.”

A trajectory

A local of Queens, N.Y., Lyon was born in 1942, when Roosevelt was president. He described Queens as “a homogenous and boring place” and he yearned to see the remainder of America.

Lyon credit his father — a doctor and immigrant from Nazi Germany — an  “excellent photographer and filmmaker” and Civil War photographer, Mathew Brady, “the historian with a camera,” as influences.

“When the (civil rights) movement began, I understood that a great historic event was taking place, an event that had its roots in the Civil War and slavery,” he stated. “I was the campus photographer and a history major. I grabbed two cameras and went south. It was fateful, and one of the best decisions I ever made.”

The first place Lyon traveled to was Albany, Georgia, throughout the top of the Albany Movement in 1962. King was jailed there. Lyon was locked up too in a segregated jail.

“I was in jail a day and a night and was bored out of mind,” he stated. “I couldn’t wait to get out.”

Lyon stated it was essential to honor the motion’s unsung heroes.

“This was a grassroots movement of young Southern Blacks, often high school students. It is the model we all need to overturn injustice in America,” he stated. “It involved thousands and thousands of people across the Deep South. SNCC provided organizing, discipline and leadership.”

Lyon thinks the nation will survive the present political local weather marked by intense racial enmities not see for the reason that civil rights motion, saying America is “too huge, too nice, too lovely a rustic.

“America,” he stated, “has always struggled against its internal hates and racism.”

“Memories of the Civil Rights Movement,” that includes Danny Lyon’s images and historical past of SNCC will be discovered at Bleakbeauty.com, or on Instagram at Dannylyonphotos2.